


Imagined Conversations

by Rozmund



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: But canon compliant, Canon Compliant, Conversations, F/M, Fluff, Mild Smut, just things I would have liked to see in the show, set during and after Season 3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 63,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22200091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rozmund/pseuds/Rozmund
Summary: This is mostly filling in how I would have continued the show, but I tried to make it as cute as I could. :)Chapter 27 is up (only 8 months later...)! I've missed you!
Relationships: Diana Barry & Gilbert Blythe, Diana Barry & Gilbert Blythe & Anne Shirley, Gilbert Blythe & Sebastian "Bash" Lacroix, Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 688
Kudos: 971





	1. Gilbert finally talks about his feelings with Bash

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Diana finishes her rant](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22166854) by [Rozmund](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rozmund/pseuds/Rozmund). 



Bash looked up as the kitchen door slowly swung open and Gilbert walked in, a wan smile on his face.

“Hey, brother, I wasn’t expecting to see you so early. I thought you would stay to celebrate.”

Gilbert slumped into a chair, eyes fixed on a spot on the table. “I didn’t propose, so my visit was pretty short.”

Bash’s mouth dropped open in shock, but he said nothing.

“Oh, please don’t say anything to anyone about this. I promised Winifred that I would give her two weeks to leave for Paris before the news gets out.”

Bash nodded quietly and started a pot of tea for both of them. Gilbert was still sitting at the table in silence when he was finished.

“What happened?”

Gilbert shook his head. “It wasn’t right. I wasn’t doing any of it for the right reasons.” He sighed and finally looked up. “You win. I couldn’t…propose, to someone else, not when I’m in love with Anne.”

Bash nearly laughed at that but managed to cover it up. Trust Blythe to ruin his moment of triumph by being so miserable about it.

“For whatever it’s worth, if that’s the way you feel, I think you made the right decision.”

Gilbert scraped a hand over his face. “After making every wrong decision I could, it seems. Winifred was so upset this morning, far more so than I expected, and things will probably never be the same with Anne again. What was I thinking, letting it get this far?”

“Brother, I have no idea what you were thinking. I’ve been wondering myself. How long ago did I tell you to admit when you’re gone over a lady?”

Gilbert shot him a look of exasperation. “Do you want to gloat, or do you want me to talk?”

Bash felt a stab of guilt as he watched Gilbert’s drawn face and pondered whether he could have changed things by forcing Blythe to talk a long time ago. “Sorry, go on.”

“I thought I just had a crush on Anne, and that I should get over it, since she didn’t show any interest in me. I mean, she was pushing me to write on the Take Notice board about Ruby. Ruby! When have I ever acted like I was interested in Ruby?!”

This time, Bash showed some compassion for his brother and covered up his amusement at the dramatic goings-on of the Avonlea schoolchildren. It was hard, walking the path to manhood. Bash remembered his own youthful mistakes and didn’t envy Gilbert one bit.

“I thought I just needed to move on, and Winifred is nice and pretty and all. I thought – isn’t this what everyone does? You meet a nice girl and you see if you fall in love. It seemed better than pining for someone who isn’t interested.”

“I don’t think that’s so crazy.”

“It probably works better when you’re not already in love with someone else.”

Bash shrugged and nodded. Blythe had a point. “To be fair, you didn’t know you were in love with her.”

Gilbert laughed ruefully. “Right. If anything, my feelings for Anne got stronger while I was trying to stuff them down. When Winifred’s father said I had his blessing, the first thought that crossed my mind was, ‘but I’d have to give up Anne, forever.’ It scared the daylights out of me, to be honest. Here I was, sitting with Winifred’s father talking about the Sorbonne and proposals, and I finally realized, or, I guess, admitted to myself, that I want to marry someone else. I have no idea what else I said to him that night. I completely panicked.”

“You cover up panic pretty well then, since you seemed fine the next day.”

“I was just trying to make myself feel better, since Anne had rejected me. If you had seen what a mess I was walking home the night before…,” Gilbert took a sip of tea and shook his head again. “I shouldn’t have said anything to anyone about the possibility of proposing until I was sure. I made the whole thing even worse.”

“You’re young, Blythe. Some things you don’t know until you learn. If I had met Mary when I was 18, there’s no telling what kind of fool I might have been.”

“The one thing I still can’t understand is – Winifred said I made her believe I loved her. I feel…terrible about it. I don’t love her, but I care about her. Still, I never said anything to her like that, or, or kissed her, or said anything about marriage specifically. I don’t even know if she wants children, or anything like that! I thought…we were learning if we would suit. How could I not see it?” He groaned. “Her mother had already spoken to the minister about the wedding!”

Bash raised his eyebrows. “Even though you hadn’t told her or her father that you would actually propose?”

“Yes!”

Bash might have worried before that Blythe was rushing into this marriage, but now he was especially grateful for Gilbert’s decision. He suspected they would have seen more evidence of incompatibility if the relationship had continued. Under the circumstances, though, it didn’t seem necessary to say that.

“Listen, Blythe, I’m not going to tell you that this is your finest moment.” Gilbert gave a reluctant nod of acknowledgment. He wasn’t going to deny that. “But, you didn’t set out to deceive Miss Rose, did you?” Gilbert shook his head vehemently.

“I thought I was doing what everyone does when they’re trying to decide about marriage. I didn’t think I gave her the impression that I had already decided. Of course, I wasn’t decided at all, since by the time her father brought up marriage I had just started to admit the truth of my feelings to myself. I should have said something that night, but I was so shocked.”

“Perhaps she made some mistakes too, and believed what she wanted to believe.” Gilbert nodded slowly, considering the possibility. Bash watched him carefully. Poor Blythe looked exhausted. Bash stood and gave Gilbert a clap on the shoulder. “You can’t do anything about it now and you thought you were doing the right thing. No sense in beating yourself up for it forever.”

“I just never thought I would get in over my head like that.”

“Blythe, I messed up so badly when I was your age that my mama is still scolding me about it. You aren’t the first young man to learn a lesson the hard way. Just learn it, and don’t make the mistake of assuming things and keeping everything to yourself the next time.”

Gilbert nodded, his tortured expression softening slightly.

“I don’t know…if I should tell you this but…Anne came by to see you, while you were away.”

Gilbert started. “She did?! Did she say why?”

“No, but she brought flowers for us.”

Gilbert’s brows furrowed quizzically as he struggled to understand what it all meant. “Maybe…I misunderstood her, the other night.”

“I thought you said you asked her if there was a chance and she said no.”

“Not in so many words.”

“What words did you two use, then?”

“I told her what Winnie’s father had said, and Anne asked me what was holding me back from proposing. I said her, or I guess, something like, ‘just one thing,’ and then she seemed really shocked and kind of…babbled. Then the girls came to drag her away for something and she didn’t say anything more to me and I left.”

“What girls? Where were you?”

“They were having a party after the exam, at the ruins.”

Bash fixed Gilbert with a level stare as he struggled to hold back. He had already told Blythe that he was a fool so many times that day but really, _that_ was his confession to Anne?! It seemed a minor miracle that the girl was merely incoherent and not enraged.

“Okay, I am going to make a suggestion. I would try telling Anne how you feel, using the words ‘I love you’, without mentioning that you might _propose to someone else_ , and see how it goes.”

Gilbert rolled his eyes slightly at Bash’s pointed comment, but nodded. “I had been thinking the same thing.”

“See? You’re learning already.”


	2. Diana finishes her rant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of Gilbert and Diana's conversation on the train.

“Diana, what letter?!” Diana started, momentarily shocked out of her anger at Gilbert’s desperate question.

“You didn’t get it?”

“No!” By now Gilbert’s eyes were darting back and forth rapidly, seemingly staring at nothing, while his breath became uneven.

“She…she left it at your house after that night at the ruins.”

“And it said she loves me?”

“Does it make a difference if it did?” It was beginning to dawn on her that perhaps she and Anne were operating under some colossal misunderstandings, but she was too upset with Gilbert to let it go just yet.

“YES!” Gilbert looked back at Diana. “Didn’t she get my letter?”

“She told me a few days ago that you wrote her a letter with her own pen to tell her that you don’t love her.”

“What?!” Gilbert buried his face in his hands. “How – how could she think that was what it said?” He muttered this last part to himself, voice still shaking with emotion. Diana had never seen him so affected. Suddenly his head snapped up. “Diana, is she in Charlottetown already?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“What did your letter say?”

“Diana, please….”

“Gilbert, she is my best friend and you broke her heart. I will tell you where she is only if I can be sure that you won’t break it again.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

“Then what have you been doing all these months?!”

“I thought she didn’t have feelings for me! I thought…that I needed to move on. It didn’t work, obviously.” His eyes were back on the floor now, jaw clenched, his expression flitting back and forth between hope and fear.

“You thought she didn’t have feelings for you, ever?” Diana raised her eyes to the heavens. “You and Anne are perfect for each other, honestly. How could two people this oblivious exist in the world?” Gilbert was just staring at her now, eyes pleading. "What did your letter really say?"

“It said…it said it’s always been her, and it always will be. It said I wasn’t engaged and I wouldn’t be unless it was to her.” His eyes were beginning to mist over now. “Diana please, I’m begging you. Please tell me where she is.”

Diana’s eyes finally softened and she let out a gentle sigh. “I will write down the address.” He rifled through his bag for paper and a pen and she scratched out the address rapidly. "Write down your new address too, just in case." Gilbert grabbed the pen as soon as she was finished and scribbled it down.

“This is close, isn't it? I only have a 20 minute layover between trains.”

“Quite close – if you go to the first car so that you are the first one off the train and you run, you should have a few minutes to spare to see her.” Diana looked out the window and saw that they were rapidly approaching the Charlottetown station. “You should go now.”

Gilbert launched out of his seat as if shot from a cannon, clutching the address in his hand.

“Gilbert?”

He turned back to Diana. “Yes?”

“Her letter really did say she loves you.”

He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, breaking into a smile Diana hadn’t seen in ages. “I can never thank you enough, Diana.” He turned and bolted through the door just then. Diana could see him hurrying through the aisles of the next train car as she gathered up his things, including his book, lying completely forgotten on the seat. She returned to her father, carrying Gilbert’s discarded bag, just as the train began to slow.

“What exactly did you say to Gilbert that put him in such a state?” Her father asked.

“I merely told him some things he needed to hear,” Diana replied with a grin.

“Well then, where is he going, without his bags?”

“To tell Anne he loves her.” Her father merely stared at her. “It’s a very long story.”


	3. Winifred and Anne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winifred tells Anne that Gilbert loves her.

“Gilbert didn’t tell you…anything?”

Anne turned, still utterly confused. “Tell me what?”

Winifred had the odd thought in that moment that Anne’s brow furrowed a bit like Gilbert’s, when he was confused, but it was much harder to see with Anne’s pale features and strawberry blonde, wispy brows. She looked hard at Anne, an unreadable expression on her face.

“Gilbert…didn’t propose. He came here two weeks ago and ended things because…,” she drew in a deep breath and decided to reveal it all, if only for Anne’s sake, “because he loves you.”

Anne merely stood rooted to the ground, speechless. A thousand different thoughts fought for attention in her mind and she nearly dropped her parasol, which finally startled her back to the present. Winifred watched silently as Anne’s face began to betray the hope that was growing in her heart.

“It’s not unrequited, is it?” Winifred asked, more gently than she expected.

Anne started slightly at the question but was still too overcome to know how to respond, and merely shook her head.

 _How is it possible that he never learned this? I think you might be very bad at courtship, Gilbert_ , Winifred thought with a quiet laugh to herself. _Perhaps Anne can straighten you out._ Then another thought crossed her mind.

“But…you believed we were engaged?” Anne nodded. “And you love him?” She nodded again. “And you came over here to tell me I look lovely and congratulate me?” Anne nodded briefly a third time, eyes scrunched up in confusion. “ _Why_?!”

“I thought the two of you were in love, and I wanted you to be happy together, in that case,” Anne replied, shrugging slightly, as though it were the most obvious answer in the world.

Winifred stared at her incredulously for a beat, and finally broke into her first genuine smile in two weeks. “I think I’m beginning to understand why he loves you.” She wrestled for a moment about whether to continue, but she felt a bit guilty about snapping at the girl when she first arrived and decided again that Anne deserved whatever assurances she could give. “We were never in love, you know. It would have been a marriage of convenience.” She bit out the words a bit as she said them, only now realizing that it was true for the both of them. Perhaps Gilbert wasn’t the only one who was learning a thing or two about matters of the heart. _If only I had a man I really loved to salve my wounds when this is done_ , she thought wryly. _Perhaps I’ll find him in Paris_. “I’m not certain that Gilbert deserves you though,” she finished with a teasing grin, though she truly believed the sentiment.

Anne laughed. “You have no idea what I’ve done to him in the past. I whacked him over the head with my slate on the first day we met.”

 _Oh good, she probably can keep him in line_. Winifred chuckled at that thought. “I’m thrilled to hear it, frankly.” _Perhaps I should have thrown over Gilbert and invited Anne to Paris._

The church clock struck half past 11 in the distance. Anne turned her head suddenly to the sound, as though she had just realized something.

“You should go, if you need to be somewhere,” Winifred offered.

Anne smiled warmly and picked up her discarded parasol. She moved as if to leave, then turned back. “I really do hope you have a wonderful life, Winifred.”

“You too,” Winifred replied, with genuine sincerity.

Anne rushed off through the gate, and Winifred watched after her for a moment before her mother joined her. “Who was that?”

“Anne,” she said simply.

Her mother’s eyes went wide. “What on earth was she doing here?!”

“Giving me her best wishes for a wonderful life with Gilbert.”

“ _WHAT?!”_

“She didn’t know. She loves him, and she thought he was marrying me, and she came to congratulate me anyway. I set her straight,” she said with a shrug. “It seemed appropriate.”

“Extraordinary.”

“Yes, it seems that sometimes you want to hate a person but she just won’t let you.” Winifred laughed. “How inconvenient.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm handwaving a bit, but my theory is that Winifred was in love with being in love and believed what she wanted to believe, regardless of what Gilbert's behavior should have led her to believe. She's a bit like Book Anne, who convinces herself for a while that she's in love with Roy even though she isn't. 
> 
> Also, I think Winifred and Anne would be better friends than Winifred/Gilbert, and it's a damn shame they won't get a chance. :)
> 
> ETA - now I have this idea where Winifred falls in love and gets engaged in Paris, returns to Charlottetown for some reason and sees Anne, no hard feelings. The girls somehow go out to celebrate and return to Aunt Josephine's smashing drunk, giggling uncontrollably. Gilbert is there and is fucking terrified that the two of them were hanging out, since he has no idea what Winifred thinks of him at all. They remain friends and Gilbert sort of hates it because he still thinks Winifred thinks badly of him, but he can't think of a good reason to discourage them so the two of them just get up to trouble whenever Winifred is back in Canada.


	4. Gilbert Talks to Himself and Writes to Anne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gilbert's thought process while he is on the train to Toronto and his first letter to Anne.

It turned out that there were some problems with kissing the love of your life and then suddenly departing for a 16 hour trip; namely, that it left 16 hours for a fellow to think about the kiss, and its meaning, and everything leading up to the kiss, over and over, until he had driven himself crazy.

He spent the first few hours in elated shock, thinking of nothing but the day’s events. Somehow, miraculously, Anne loved him back, and he had found her. He replayed every kiss, look, and word, staring out the window and smiling so widely that he supposed he must have looked slightly addled to the other passengers. He also spent a good amount of time imagining Bash's smug glee when he finally learned of the day's events. He wondered just how much dancing he would have to endure when he next returned home.

It was after that, though, that the doubts crept it. He was so used to doubting himself when it came to Anne that he supposed it was as natural to him as breathing by now. It occurred to him after a time that Anne had probably felt something for him for a while, considering Diana’s tirade. Surely, there would be no reason for Diana to care about his years-long affection for Anne or the fair otherwise. He suddenly groaned loudly as memories of that day came flooding back, startling a passenger who had settled across from him.

“Are you alright, son?” The older gentleman asked.

Gilbert inclined his head slightly. “My apologies. It has been a very big day for me.”

The gentleman eyed him for a moment before returning to his newspaper, and Gilbert returned to his self-flagellation. He had been trying so very hard to avoid betraying his feelings for Anne the day of the fair, afraid that the attraction he had felt during the dance practice would be apparent if he gave in at all and he would ruin any chance to impress Winifred’s parents. Seeing the day in a different light, he suspected that Anne’s odd behavior had been about him, and he resisted the urge to groan again.

_You have been an even bigger fool lately than you thought, Blythe._

Still, even after all of that, and his courtship, and that disastrous night at the ruins, Anne had written him to say she loved him, anyway. He shook his head in wonder. How was it possible? When had it started?

Then, the biggest question of all hit him. What, exactly, should he do now? After all the misunderstandings and mistakes, he had left her with hardly a word. He rifled through his bag for a notebook and pencil, anxious to send Anne a letter as soon as he arrived. He started the letter a half-dozen times, scratching out words here and there, heart pounding as he pictured Anne reading them. He had finally learned his lesson and wouldn’t hesitate to bare his soul.

_My Anne with an E,_

_You have no idea how it thrills my heart to write those words to you. It took everything I had to leave you just now, instead of holding you close and revealing the full extent of my affection and desire for you._

He hoped the honesty wouldn’t scare her off, but he supposed if his behavior over the last few months hadn’t already scared her off, it was unlikely that a letter would push her over the edge. His Anne didn’t exactly scare easily, he thought with a chuckle to himself.

_Where should I start? I suppose that Diana will tell you some of what I said when we were on the train, but I feel I should also share everything myself. I do not want any more misunderstandings between us. So, I should start by saying: Anne, I love you._

_I think the message of my last letter was somehow misunderstood, so let me try to reproduce it, as much as I can. I confess that I thought of how to reveal my feelings to you that day thousands of times, so the words are fairly seared into my mind._

_“Since we are parting ways, perhaps forever, I feel I must unburden my heart. You are the fond object of my affection and my desire. You alone are the keeper of the key to my heart. Please, don’t be alarmed. I don’t expect your favour, but I cannot, in good conscience, not reveal myself. I’m not engaged, nor will I be; unless, it’s to you, Anne. My Anne with an E. It always has been, and always will be, you.”_

_I meant every one of those words the day that I wrote them, I mean every one of those words today, and I will mean every one of those words for the rest of my life. Am I too bold in my sentiments? I am nervous even writing them down, but I never again want to leave you with any doubt of your place in my heart. There are no words that could ever describe how I felt, when Diana said that you wrote me a letter telling me you love me. The only moment that could ever surpass that joy was when you kissed me, and I knew that my fervent hope was not merely an illusion._

_But now I come to the part I dread. Knowing now that you share my love, I am horrified to imagine how you must have felt these last few months. I am deeply ashamed to know that I must have caused you pain. I can offer some poor explanations, for whatever they are worth. I truly believed that you did not share my feelings (or perhaps, if I am truly honest, I was afraid to know for sure, believing as I did), and so I thought any decisions I made affected my life, and mine alone. The feelings I have for Winifred are those of friendship and caring, but those feelings are not, and never were, of the kind that I feel for you. I felt it was unfair to her to marry when I would not have considered it but for the opportunity to attend the Sorbonne, and I felt I would be untrue to myself, to ignore the pull of my heart to you._

_These pitiful words are hardly enough to make up for my mistakes. I wish desperately that I could be with you this moment, to pull you into my arms and do whatever I can to atone. I will say as much or as little as you would like about it in the future, but will add only that at no point have I regretted my decision to end the courtship, even before I knew how you felt. My heart belongs only to you, and I could never live my life in a way that betrays this essential truth._

_Much of my long journey has passed while I have written and rewritten this letter, hoping that in the end my words are perfect and bring you the joy that you have given me, whenever I think of your beautiful face before me (and your kiss – or should I not speak of such things in letters? Feel free to scold me if I am too forward). I hate that the distance between us grows with each passing moment, but I will return again and again to your side, Anne-girl, until the day that no distance is required at all._

_And I suppose with that I should be bold one more time. I should have asked at the very first (and so many times before today), so now I will ask – will you agree to court me? I should also like to ask for Matthew and Marilla’s blessing, if you don’t mind. I know you would not want or need to seek their permission, but after making every other mistake under the sun I would very much like to show respect to your beloved family as well._

_I have just arrived in Toronto, safe and sound. I promise to send you many, many letters, so that you feel like you are here with me, until I can return and tell you all in person. I await your letters eagerly; I don’t think I will be able to rest easy until I know how you are doing._

_With love,_

_Gilbert_

_PS – Please tell Diana again that I will be forever grateful that she decided to confront me for being an utter fool. Is there a gift extravagant enough for saving me from the terrible fate of losing you? I doubt I will ever be able to find something suitable, but Diana can name her price if she wants._

Gilbert stumbled to his new dormitory, bleary-eyed, just before dawn. As he waited for someone, anyone, to unlock the doors so that he could begin a new chapter in his life, he wrote out his letter one last time. This time he wrote in pen, without the bumps and jolts of the train to mar his handwriting. 

Finally, a kindly man by the name of Mr. Harrison opened the front door, to find his last new student waiting patiently on the front steps.

“Blythe, is it? We’ve been expecting you. Come inside; you must be exhausted after such a journey.”

“Yes, but one question. Is there a post office nearby? I have a letter that simply must go out at the first possible opportunity.”


	5. Anne and Diana Finally Catch Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne and Diana are both dying to talk about what happened with Gilbert.

Diana was fairly bursting out of her skin by the time she and Anne returned to their room. They had spent most of their first day exploring Charlottetown and talking excitedly with the other girls about the start of classes tomorrow, but in between all of the other disruptions, they hadn’t found a single second to talk about the biggest event of all (and they would certainly need more than a single second to discuss it). Occasionally she would catch Anne staring off into space, cheeks flushed pink, so she was certain Anne was also entirely distracted by her secret. They had both hastily agreed to keep the matter quiet, and Diana had managed to convince her father to forget about it for now. It seemed only right that they should give Gilbert and Anne time to sort out their relationship between them without interference or gossip.

“As long as Gilbert follows through on things, properly. After that display I saw, I shall have a few words for him myself if he does not.” Her father kept his tone light, but Diana knew he was actually quite serious. Her father might have relented about Queens, but he certainly wasn’t prepared to throw all propriety and tradition out the window or let an Avonlea girl be used.

“I guarantee, Father, you’ll be attending their wedding just as soon as Gilbert finishes medical school.”

Anne had also quietly told Matthew and Marilla that Gilbert was not, in fact, engaged, and that he had come to see Anne before departing. She left out a few important details, like passionate kisses on the lawn, but they got the idea. They were both content to let the two of them correspond and settle things for themselves before prying any further. All they needed was to see Anne’s beaming face to feel confident that things would turn out all right.

Finally, it was time for lights-out, and Diana tiptoed over to Anne’s bed as soon as the last door closed in the hall.

“Tell me everything!” she squealed (as much as one can squeal at a whisper).

“You too!” Anne exclaimed. “How did you come to have his bags? Were you the one to tell him where I was?”

“After he told me that his letter actually said he would always love you and would never get engaged unless it was to you, I thought it only fair to tell him how to find you.” Diana had been dying to tell Anne about that romantic declaration all day. She already knew that he was completely in love with her best friend, but to say something so bold, even to Diana? She wasn’t exactly the romantic that Anne was, but even she nearly swooned at that.

“WHAT?”

“I always knew he felt that way. Goodness, he was chasing you from the very first day.”

“But…how? How did you even find this out? He didn’t confess to me in all that time but he told you everything _today_?”

“We ran into him on the train, and, well, my father said something about his engagement. That’s when we found out that he isn’t engaged and was going to Toronto. Then…I might have said some things to him.”

“Like what?”

“Um, well, just –“ She fiddled with Anne’s pillow and tried to think of a gentle way to admit that she had verbally thrashed her best friend’s love, in public.

“Diana?”

“Okay fine. I should start by saying that things were better by the time this conversation was over, obviously, but at this point I thought he was a cad. I yelled at him, for being smitten with you all these years and courting some mystery debutante anyway. I threw in the fact that he expected you to make a momentous decision, in a single night, just after exams. Then I added that he ignored your letter –“

Anne buried her face in her pillow to smother her laughter. “You two were sitting on the train, while you yelled at him?”

“I still maintain he deserved it. Anyway, he never got your letter.”

Anne sat up. “I wondered about that, after what I heard from – nevermind. What did he say?”

“When he heard that you wrote to him and said you loved him…I’ve never seen him like that.” Diana gently took her hand. “If only you could have seen his face; I think it was the only thing he wanted to hear in the world. He really loves you.”

Anne’s eyes started to fill with tears. “It still seems unbelievable.”

“I think it’s very believable.” They exchanged a look that only two best friends could understand.

“So, what happened when he came to see you?! I mean, besides those kisses,” Diana added slyly. She could see Anne’s embarrassment, even in the darkness.

“Well, there’s something I didn’t tell you earlier. I actually already knew that he wasn’t engaged. I ran into Winifred today; she’s the one who told me.”

“Really?!”

“She was completely shocked that I didn’t know. He told her two weeks ago that he couldn’t marry her, because he loves me.” Now it was Diana’s turn to sit up straight. “She said it would have been a marriage of convenience, but he didn’t want to do it, even though he thought his love was unrequited.”

“He always loved you; he just thought you didn’t love him back. He said he tried to move on and it…didn’t work.”

“How did it happen like this?” Anne exclaimed, sinking back into her pillows dramatically.

“I don’t know, dearest, but at least it turned out well, right?” Anne smiled and shook with excitement, just as Diana pounced on her with an excited hug. “Now, young lady,” she teased, slightly breathless, “don’t think you’re getting out of telling me what happened when he actually arrived!”

Normally bold Anne was suddenly bashful. “Well, I was rushing out the door to come home and see him, after what I had heard from Winifred. And…there he was, all of a sudden. He was…completely out of breath, and staring at me like he never had before –“

“I doubt that. He stares at you all the time like the world revolves around you.”

Anne rolled her eyes indulgently. “I promise you, it was like nothing I have ever seen before.” She took a deep breath. “At first he didn’t say anything. He just…he kissed me.”

Diana’s hand flew to her mouth. “Gilbert!” She leaned over to examine Anne’s face in the faint light. “Was it perfect?” Anne tried to bite her lip, but she could hardly hide her wide grin. “Yeah, you don’t have to answer, I know it was perfect.” She poked her friend playfully. “Only my darling Anne could make our studious Gilbert Blythe into such a romantic.”


	6. Bash Gets a Letter and Spills the Beans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gilbert's letter to Bash, and then Bash can't help but share his triumph with someone...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized that I skipped writing a letter from Anne to Gilbert, but I was having some writer's block about how to do it and I've seen several great fics with the letter already. If anyone really wants it, I could be persuaded, probably. :)
> 
> Thanks for your comments - you all are so great. :)

On an otherwise ordinary afternoon, Bash finally received the news he had always hoped to receive. He read the words in shock, before breaking into his celebratory dance again. It wasn’t quite as fun without Gilbert there to witness his triumph, but he had to make do.

_Dear Bash,_

_I’m sure you assumed that the school would contact you if I was anything less than alive and well, but let me assure you that I am. I started classes immediately upon arriving, so the entire first week has been a whirlwind as I try to get settled and keep up with schoolwork all at once. So far, my roommate and I are getting along well, and there are a few other fellows in the dorm who seem friendly enough. I have spent most of my time studying, though, so I can’t say that there is too much to tell other than to give you an account of my classes, and I should hate to bore you with that. I suppose my room accommodations are more pleasant than sleeping in the belly of a ship, so thank goodness for small favors._

_I have some other news that will probably be of far more interest to you than Chemistry 101. It turns out…Anne loves me, too, and we have started courting._

_Have you finished dancing around and gloating so that I can tell you what happened? I know you must be dying to hear the whole story._

_I ran into Diana and Mr. Barry on the train to Charlottetown, and after I told them both that I would be attending U of T instead of the Sorbonne, Diana saw fit to give me her opinion of my recent actions (it is probably obvious, but her opinion was not favorable). In case you ever wondered if Diana Barry can be as passionately angry as her best friend, let me assure you that she can._

_At first I was completely flabbergasted, since she railed at me first for being smitten with Anne since the day we met (perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this – call it a peace offering for ignoring your advice about Anne for so long – suffice it to say you weren’t the only one who knew how I felt, apparently), then about my courtship and then about my completely ill-advised confession to Anne. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why it mattered so much to her, since Anne had rejected me, after all._

_Then we came to the most important information (though rest assured, I gave her other points some serious consideration after the fact) – she was furious with me for ignoring a letter Anne wrote to me. Bash, right after that night at the ruins, Anne had left me a letter at our house, telling me that she loved me. I had no idea, and I think my heart might have actually stopped when I heard Diana say those words. (Also, if you ever find that letter, please save it for me?) As you might imagine, the entire conversation ended with me begging Diana to help me find Anne. It turned out that my letter to her had been misunderstood, and Anne still believed that I was in love with Winifred and engaged. (No, it is not necessary for you to point out in your next letter, as I know you want to, that I have been a complete idiot. I know I was a complete idiot. As though I needed more proof, her best friend also pointed out that I was a complete idiot. I am trying to make amends for it now, for whatever that is worth, but I think that is between me and my Anne.)_

Bash stopped briefly there, to smile and roll his eyes. “Blythe hasn’t even gotten to the part of the story where he has spoken to the girl, and she’s already ‘my Anne’ in this letter,” he muttered to himself. Watching Blythe play the love-struck suitor was likely to be even more exhausting than watching him pine for the girl at a distance.

_I ran to find Anne like my life depended on it. I only had a few minutes to talk to her, but it was enough. I used to think you were exaggerating, when you told me how you felt meeting Mary. I don’t know if it’s the same, since I’ve had feelings for her for so long, but I think I finally understand what you meant. In the past I couldn’t let myself feel that…overwhelming joy and rightness, but then standing in front of Anne and knowing that her loving smile was for me, the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place. I’ll have to wait far longer than you did, I’m afraid, but now I understand how you could end up drunk and proposing after only a few walks. Perhaps it is best that I wasn’t able to stay any longer, so that I couldn’t go completely overboard._

Bash sucked in a long breath and blinked the tears from his eyes. Though he had no hope that the ache of losing Mary would ever fully subside, he would remain grateful until the end of his days that he had thrown caution to the wind and married the most incredible woman he’d ever met, almost on the spot. It stitched his heart back together a bit, knowing that his brother had summoned his courage and found the same happiness.

_I am sure you will see Anne again before I do (to my supreme disappointment), so when you do, please do try not to embarrass me too much. Haven’t I suffered enough?_

Bash laughed aloud at that. “No,” he said simply. “The only question is whether I tell her every fool thing you did or only some of them.”

_I have also sent a letter to Matthew and Marilla, asking for their blessing. It should arrive the same day as your letter. I won’t lie to you – I’m very nervous so please do put in a good word for me, if you can think of one._

_Give Delly a kiss for me and don’t let her grow up too much while I’m away. I miss you all, but I will admit that right now I am very happy to be far away so that you can keep your helpful commentary to yourself. Perhaps you’ll be over it by Christmas, but that seems too much to hope._

Bash hurried off as soon as he could to learn of the Cuthberts’ reaction and to invite Gilbert’s future in-laws for a celebration.

. . .

Muriel stopped by the next afternoon with another fresh catch, finding Bash alone in the kitchen, responding to Gilbert.

Bash stood up to greet her, and Muriel noticed the name at the top of the letter, along with the words, scrolled large and bold across the top, I WIN!

“What exactly do you win?” She asked with a smile.

“Ah, well, I was right about something, and I’ve been right for a long time, and I really enjoy being right when it comes to Blythe,” he explained gleefully.

Muriel narrowed her eyes. “That sounds…intriguing, but I will not pry. How is Gilbert doing at U of T?”

“Oh, wonderfully. The boy has probably never been so happy.” Bash knew his comments were vague and laced with hidden meaning, but he was fairly bursting to tell _someone_ about his triumph. His mother and Elijah hadn’t suffered enough through Blythe’s antics to truly appreciate it.

“I am glad to hear it. I worried that the last few months have been…hard on him.” She didn’t elaborate, but of course she had wondered at his sudden change in school plans. Her suspicions were confirmed when she heard a few weeks later that there was no engagement. Gilbert wasn’t the type to share anything openly, though, so she could only speculate as to the cause.

Bash rolled his eyes. “You don’t know the half of it. But things are looking up, now, just as I always thought they would.”

Muriel rolled her eyes back. Bash was beginning to sound like one of her students, ready to divulge juicy gossip. “You really want to tell me, don’t you?”

“It is killing me.”

By now, it was killing Muriel too. “What if you tell me, and it’ll be our secret?”

“You must promise to pretend you never heard, because you will probably hear it from others. Are you a good actress?”

“I am a teacher; of course I am a good actress,” she scoffed playfully.

“Alright, good enough for me.” Bash raised his eyebrows and blurted out, “Gilbert is in love with Anne and he wrote to Matthew and Marilla to ask for their blessing to court.”

Muriel pursed her lips for a moment before she could hold it in no longer and began to laugh uncontrollably. “I knew it!”

“You too?!” Bash grinned and shook his head. “Of course you did. If the boy mooned over her at school the way he did at home, how could you miss it?”

“I had my suspicions over the years, but then, you should have heard the two of them fighting after the fair. Anyone who has ever been in a lover’s quarrel would recognize it in a heartbeat.”

“Oh my, really?” He shook his head again. “If only we had all come together to sort those two out, we probably could have saved them a lot of trouble. Matthew and Marilla knew, too.”

Muriel leaned in and raised her eyebrows conspiratorially. “So, when did you know?”

“That lovesick fool would talk about her on the ship, for no reason at all. By the time she sent him a letter that he _very carefully_ saved in his bag so that it wouldn’t get stolen or ruined, I knew.”

“She sent him a letter on the ship?!”

“Yes, something about gold in Avonlea.”

“Oh, I heard about all of that. Sure was nice of her to send him a letter to tell him about it.”

“Yes, it was.” They smiled at each other knowingly.

“But then the boy wouldn’t admit to anything, so by the time we came back here I just watched him stare at her constantly and gave up teasing him. I figured he would come around, eventually. I didn’t expect him to fight so hard to avoid admitting it before he came around, but then I remembered, he’s 18.” They both laughed at that, knowing well that it is the lot of every young person to learn a few painful lessons through their mistakes.

“So…what happened?”

“He ended the courtship a month ago because he realized he was in love with Anne and he didn’t wish to marry just for the Sorbonne, for his sake or Miss Rose’s.”

“Good for him.”

“But, he thought Anne didn’t feel the same.”

That surprised her. “Really?”

“He didn’t do the best job of asking her directly in the first place.”

Muriel shook her head in amazement. “I have no wish to be that age again.”

“I’m with you there. Somehow, Diana Barry found him on the train to Charlottetown and read him the riot act for his foolishness lately –“

“That’s my girl.”

“Yes, he owes her everything. Anyway, she told him that Anne had written him a letter saying she loved him, but he had never seen it. He went running through Charlottetown to find Anne before he left for Toronto and she confirmed she loved him back. Of course, the boy didn’t share exactly _how_ she confirmed it, because he loves leaving out important information all the time.” Bash threw up his hands.

“Well, he will probably visit soon, now that he has a sweetheart back here, so you can demand information then.”

“I cannot wait. I will do nothing but tease this boy for months.”


	7. Diana writes to Gilbert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diana decides she has a few more words of advice for Gilbert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your kudos and comments! I do have a few more chapters in the works based on your requests, although I really wanted to do this one just because it's been rattling around in my head forever.

A few weeks after school began, Gilbert received a surprising letter. The return address was Anne’s boarding house, but he could see in an instant that it wasn’t Anne’s handwriting.

 _Dear Gilbert_ ,

_I suppose you did not expect to hear from me. Rest assured, I will not write again on this topic, and I do not expect a response. I know you said that you wanted to give me any gift in the world for speaking to (should I say berating?) you on the train that day, so let this be your gift – please do not tell Anne that I wrote to you._

_Since it seems that things have turned out as we all hoped, and you acquitted yourself well in your letters so far (not that she would let me read them; your sweetheart can be annoyingly secretive), I thought I would try to give you a few words of advice to help you succeed in this relationship. Be grateful that these words come in the form of a gentle letter. You and I both know that you are at risk of learning about your mistakes under threat of minor bodily harm. Consider this an attempt to save you a few unfortunate encounters._

_Forgive me if this is inappropriate, but I admit I have wondered in the past if you had any idea why Anne treated you as she did when she first arrived. It wasn’t my place to tell, and I fear it still isn’t, but you might also understand why I think that you two have missed a few important conversations. I give you this information because she is my best friend, and I love her dearly._

_Most of Avonlea knows Anne only as an orphan, belonging to no one, who lived in an asylum. Anne speaks of her past very little. I know only pieces myself, which leads me to suspect that there is much more she won’t share, even with me. For example, I know that one of the men she lived with could be violent when drunk, but she didn’t share any specifics about what that meant._

_What I do know is that she lived with a few families, caring for their children, and that she was forced to move to the asylum when the father of the last family died suddenly. She has no happy stories to share about any of these families. She has never once said anything about a happy Christmas, a word of kindness, or a friend, much less a loved one. When she came to Green Gables, they nearly sent her back because she wasn’t a boy. Then, they did send her back once, when Marilla mistakenly believed she had stolen from them._

_The first time I met Anne, she told me that her life would be an utter agony without her imagination. At the time, I’ll admit that I was more focused on her big words and her incredible ability to make up stories on the spot. It didn’t occur to me until far later that I had no idea what could cause a person to consider life an agony. I remember another time not long after, she said she didn’t want to be attached to Green Gables, much as she loved it. She feared it would all disappear._

_Though she says it very rarely, even now sometimes Anne needs to be convinced that she is beautiful, smart, wonderful, and loved. It is hard for me to understand, adoring her as I do, but I do try to remember that no one said any of these things to her for 13 years. Even after she arrived in Avonlea, she feared that Marilla didn’t truly want her, and the town judged her something fierce. Mrs. Lynde said her hair was red as carrots the first time they met, and I can assure you that it was not a compliment. Her first day at school was a disaster. You may have realized that she hadn’t been to a school before and didn’t know many of the basic subjects or rules of the classroom. She also revealed something she learned with her prior family that was certainly not appropriate for a young girl to know, though she wasn’t aware until it was too late that she should have kept it to herself._

_I tell you all of this so you might understand what happened in her mind when a nice boy appeared on her second day of school. First, you made the grave mistake of speaking to Anne when Ruby Gillis had dibs on you. (I suppose it goes without saying that your vow of silence must extend as far as keeping your knowledge of this incident from Ruby.) You made Anne’s troubles with the other girls significantly worse, and she had to avoid speaking to you. That is, until you forced the matter. So then after that day she was convinced that you had insulted her looks, just as the other boys had, and played a hand in showing her temper to the class. Her temper isn’t your fault, to be sure, but to her it was another sign to the entire class that she would always be the unloved, unwanted orphan._

_I mean this to say that she had no idea what to do with any of us, back then, least of all you. It is a minor miracle that she forgave you as quickly as she did, to be honest. She is stubborn enough to hold a grudge for five years if she puts her mind to it. So then, if you try having Anne’s imagination for a moment, you might understand why she would have an impossible time believing that the boy who could have a girl like Ruby Gillis would have any feelings for her. She believed for years that she was too homely to ever make a man want to marry her, least of all one who was adored all over Avonlea._

_So when you wonder why she acted as she did, do remember that only three years ago, she believed she wasn’t loved by anyone in the world, and didn’t believe she deserved anything else. Three years isn’t really so long ago. From time to time, she may need you to remember that she still gets scared of losing the people she loves, and she may need your reassurance. You might also remember that she tends to run or yell when she’s scared. She also yells when she’s angry, but I’m afraid I will have to leave you to sort out the difference for yourself. Sorry._

_I don’t say any of this to judge you if you didn’t know. I know because I am her best friend and she tells me nearly everything, and even I sometimes don’t understand her thinking. But now that you do know, I hope you’ll do everything in your power to make her forget that the unloved girl who came to Avonlea three years ago even existed. She works hard to do that all by herself, but we all need help sometimes._

_I won’t waste time going back over my speech on the train, except to say, you do know that you should probably send her some apology flowers, right? Maybe, once a day, for a year? She is so happy right now that I doubt you truly need to do much at all to appease her on that front, but let’s just say I haven’t yet forgotten that you left her heartbroken for months. More to the point, you should keep in mind that there will be gossip, and plenty of people in Avonlea are happy to jump to any negative conclusion they can find when it comes to Anne. You’ll have to be very careful about what you tell people, and how, or she will hear plenty of hurtful comments. I have no doubt that you did not intend any such thing, and you’ll do whatever you can to avoid it, but I thought I should warn you in case you didn’t realize._

_Until you return, I promise I will take care of your girl, and I won’t let her end up face down in a ditch. Best of luck at U of T._

_Yours, etc.,_

_Diana_

Gilbert blinked back tears as he finished the letter, then he read it a second time, and then a third. Though of course he knew vaguely that Anne had a hard life before Green Gables, he was ashamed to admit that he hadn’t thought much about how it might have wounded her spirit, even now. She was so incredible and unafraid most of the time that it was sometimes difficult to imagine the Anne that Diana described, but when he considered their history it made perfect sense. Thinking back on the day of his father’s funeral, he saw her words in a different light, though he didn’t think she had been asking him to pity her. She had been correct, if inarticulate. He had lost his father, true, but he had 16 years of love, and belonging, and happy memories, before that. His heart ached to imagine his Anne, even tinier and skinnier than she had been that first morning before school, facing the cruelties of the world without anyone to protect her.

He would wish until the end of his days that he could turn back time and shield her from those awful years of her life, but since he couldn’t, he resolved to remember that she was brave, and hopeful, and loving, in the face of it all. He turned immediately from reading Diana’s letter to writing another to Anne, this one even more openly tender and admiring than any that had come before. He also spent a long paragraph admitting that he had dreamed of running his fingers through her fiery tresses for years, which had caused him on more than one occasion to misspell a word simply because she distracted him as she tossed her braids.

A week later, two bright bouquets appeared in the parlor of Mrs. Blackmore’s boarding house. Both were unsigned, but one was addressed to Anne, the other to Diana.

“Oooh, Anne and Diana have secret admirers!” Tillie squealed.

“Why would secret admirers go together to pick out bouquets?” Jane wondered.

“Who knows, perhaps they’re from our families or Aunt Jo,” Diana said with a subtle wink to Anne. She had no doubt that Anne had a secret admirer, and Diana had a friend who knew how to follow directions.

“I guess this was Gilbert’s gift to you,” Anne whispered to Diana when they returned to their room that night. The bouquets now brightened their desks.

“We should check what the flowers mean in your book, Anne!”

Anne grabbed her mother’s book and flipped open the pages, peering at her bouquet to find the matching pictures. “Mine are…pink carnations – ‘I’ll never forget you’. And forget-me-nots – that’s ‘true love’.”

“Anne! He must have asked someone about the meaning before he picked them! How sweet!” Diana forgave Gilbert just a little more with each passing minute.

“And yours are pink roses…oh - there’s a separate entry for full bloom roses like yours.” Anne looked up with a grin. “They mean gratitude.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was really bugged in the show that I felt like Gilbert never fully reckoned with Anne's history of horrific abuse and neglect. I don't really blame him for not knowing or asking, given how their relationship went, but it really seems like something that needed more attention. Like, Gilbert had his reasons for his behavior in S3, but I'll admit I am more sympathetic to Anne's feelings of inadequacy and her resulting avoidant tendencies. So in this case, I decided that Diana would be the heroic best friend one more time, because she's seen a side of Anne that he hasn't, and I think she'd still be feeling pretty protective of Anne after the shitshow that was the last few months.


	8. Anne's First Visit Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne returns to Green Gables and catches up with her friends and loved ones.

Anne’s first month of school had been filled with amusements (and plenty of studying), but she couldn’t deny that she missed home. After so many years of belonging to nowhere and no one, it tugged at her heart a bit every day to wake up to the sight of anything other than the bright white walls of Green Gables. She and Diana decided they deserved a weekend at home, after they completed a particularly difficult paper.

She flew into Matthew’s arms when she saw him on the platform. He chuckled shyly and said, “I wouldn’t want to wrinkle your fancy dress, Anne.”

She chattered the entire ride home, about her classes, the boarding house, her articles for the school paper, the delights of Charlottetown. They covered nearly every topic under the sun. Everything, that was, except Gilbert.

Matthew and Marilla had sent her a few letters, but they limited their correspondence to short missives once a week. They weren’t chattery folk, after all, and they didn’t want to distract Anne from her studies. They had informed Anne when they received Gilbert’s letter and that they had given their hearty approval, but no more.

She wasn’t entirely sure what to say to Matthew about her courtship. She was sure he was happy for her, but he just barely made it through the one conversation where they discussed kissing! She wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to hear her go into raptures about Gilbert’s letters, and she also wasn’t at all sure that she could talk about Gilbert without going into raptures.

Jerry was in the barn when she arrived at Green Gables, and she didn’t hesitate to pull him into a hug.

“I missed you!” she exclaimed.

“You too! Quelle surprise,” he added with a grin. She gave him her best sisterly glare.

“How have you liked living here?”

“Fine I guess. It’s very quiet when you’re not here. You were the one doing all the talking,” he laughed.

“Just for that, I’m not going to help you with the chores like I planned.” Anne turned to leave the barn, prepared to do her best imitation of departing in a huff.

“Anne? I heard, from Mr. Cuthbert, about…you and Gilbert.”

Anne whirled back around to face him then, eyes wide. “You haven’t said anything to anyone have you? We’ve kept things quiet.”

Jerry gave a lopsided smirk. “No, I promise, I won’t tell. But…you know, I think Mr. Cuthbert can’t…take him.” Anne’s face scrunched up in confusion. “So…if he ever causes you trouble…I’ll have to be the one to beat him up. You know, for Mr. Cuthbert.”

Anne’s hand flew to her mouth, and she collapsed into uproarious laughter. “Sometimes I like you, Jerry,” she said with an indulgent roll of her eyes. They grinned at each other, and Anne searched for a pitchfork to help with the chores.

. . .

She hurried over to the Blythe/LaCroix farm soon after breakfast the next morning. She hadn’t seen Bash since…well, she hoped to replace the memory of that day with this one.

Bash didn’t disappoint. “Anne Shirley Cuthbert!” He exclaimed as soon as he opened the door, holding Delly. Anne threw her arms around both of them and pressed a kiss to Delly’s cheek, earning her an excited coo and a wiggle of chubby baby arms and legs. Hazel stood behind him in the kitchen, watching this display with a hint of wariness.

“It is nice to see you again, Mrs. LaCroix,” Anne began brightly. “I hope you are settled in?”

“Yes, thank you,” Hazel replied with a short nod of her head. She still found the customs and manners of her new home unfamiliar and unsettling, at times, but she was trying to open up a bit more to her neighbors, for her son and granddaughter’s sakes.

“Here, Mom, can you please hold Delly for a moment? I need both arms free to do this.” Now unencumbered, Bash began a dance that would have been very familiar to Gilbert, were he there to witness it.

“I have been wanting to say this for _years_ , so thank you for giving me the chance to say that I wiiiiiiinnnnnnnn!” He finished his celebration with a spin and a triumphant punch of his fist in the air.

“So, when Gilbert told me that you were going to gloat, this is what he meant?” Anne asked, eyes shining and lips trembling with amusement.

“He warned you, did he?”

“He said you suspected and were pleased as punch that you were right.”

“Suspected? That boy – I knew he loved you before we even got here.”

This was news to Anne. “You did?!”

“Ah, so he didn’t say that your name came up, a time or two, while he was on the ship?”

“I suppose I assumed it did since I sent a letter –“

“No, I mean, for no reason at all, that boy starts telling me about a redheaded girl who whacked him over the head for calling her ‘carrots’ –“

“Did he call you that?!” Hazel gasped.

Anne nodded. “Our first meeting was not very successful.”

“I’ll say…” she murmured.

“I’ll have you know I told him that you should’ve done more than just whack him over the head.”

“I think he got my message just fine,” Anne replied, beaming.

“And then he seemed _awfully happy_ about getting your letter…”

Now she started to blush. “Perhaps he was hoping there was gold in Avonlea.”

“He wasn’t grinning like a fool when he was talking about the gold, but he sure did when you came up.”

Anne couldn’t help but grin like a fool, too. “It did take quite a lot of work to find his ship, so I suppose it’s nice that he appreciated the gesture.”

“He did.”

“I could see why he was smitten when we came back, too. Blythe needs someone like you – too serious all on his own. He needs some color in his life. And, he can’t cook. Or sing, for that matter.”

Anne smiled adoringly, her mind 1,000 miles away in Toronto. “I think he has plenty of talents.”

“Oh no, you two are both gonna act like fools about this, aren’t you? Are you gonna come up to this house bringing him plum puffs and mooning over him like he does with you?”

Anne’s smile widened. “Well…”

“Will you bring enough plum puffs to share?”

“Of course.”

“Fine then.”

Anne began to chuckle over a long-ago memory as Hazel poured tea for everyone. “You know, Diana once told Gilbert that I was a good cook.”

“Oh really? Why she do that?”

“Because she suspected we each had a bit of a crush.”

“Diana Barry is a very smart girl.”

“Yes, but I really wasn’t helping her any. I blurted out ‘but I would make a terrible wife!’ and ran out the door as fast as my legs would carry me.”

Bash stared at her blankly for a moment, and then said, “Anne, would it hurt your feelings if I laughed?” Anne shook her head, eyes sparkling with delight, as Bash nearly doubled over with laughter.

“When was this?!” he finally asked after he caught his breath.

“Not long before he started working on the ship, I guess. I’ve never said a word about it to him – it was one of the most humiliating moments of my life, and believe me, I have plenty to choose from. I wonder if he remembers…”

“Believe me, Anne, he is never going to forget that one,” Bash replied, still letting out the occasional snort of amusement. “I bet he spent the rest of the day picturing just what kind of unpredictable wife you’d be someday.”

“I doubt that…”

“I don’t doubt it. I had to listen to the boy tell me nonsense about a girl I’d never met for _months_! What word he purposely misspelled to throw a spelling bee and stuff like that…I thought about tossing him overboard.”

“He did what?!” Now Anne was decidedly less amused.

“He said he thought you were sick one time during a spelling bee so he got some word wrong so you could sit down –“

“He besmirched my academic integrity because he thought I couldn’t handle a little stomachache?!” She screeched. “Gilbert Blythe…he will be hearing about this. We are having a rematch when he comes back. We’ll see if he remembers how to spell ‘engagement’ now!”

Bash smiled at her indulgently. “Anne, give the poor boy a break. He was trying to help the girl he liked. Besides, I think you and I both know he knows how to spell engagement.”

Anne opened her mouth, then closed it again, and stared at her hands. “Fine, I’ll forgive him once. But he’s still hearing about this.”

 _I think Blythe should expect to hear a lot of things in the future,_ Bash thought, glancing at his brother’s sweetheart. She was busy playing with Delly now, singing the alphabet song. _I can’t wait._

. . .

Anne settled at the table in the sitting room that night, ready to finish her weekly letter to Gilbert. She simply had to tell him all the goings-on in Avonlea, and to tease him just a bit for driving Bash crazy with stories about her while he was on the ship. She had admitted to Bash that she had also missed him terribly during those long months, and her heart had dropped when he said he would be gone indefinitely.

“You really suffered too, didn’t you?” Bash had asked gently.

Anne nodded, not meeting his eyes.

“Would it make you feel better to know that he was suffering something terrible? He tried to cover it up, because he’s as stubborn as a mule, but I knew.”

“Maybe a little,” she admitted with a small smile.

Anne was sure to include in her letter a bit about her own pining, since her poor suitor had suffered, after all. She thought he would be thrilled to learn that she had been desperate to find an excuse to write to him on the ship, and seized on the possibility of gold the second the issue came up. She didn’t mention the hours she spent drafting the letter, or the fact that she went through more than one fancy sheet of paper, determined to send him a perfect, elegant letter. No need to make her pining sound _too_ extreme, after all.

Marilla and Matthew watched her smile and mutter a little to herself, as she toiled over her letter.

“Have either of you ever been to Toronto?” Anne finally asked, piercing the comfortable silence.

“Can’t say as I have,” Matthew replied quietly.

“Me either,” Marilla added.

“Gilbert tries to describe it as well as he can, but it would be so nice to see pictures or something to give me more scope for the imagination. I just…wish I could see where he is. It would be so much easier to think it’s real, that way,” she sighed.

“Real?” Marilla asked gently.

“That it’s really him. He’s really…writing to me. I know it is, but I spent so long believing that nothing like this would ever happen, that no one would ever kiss me…,” she gave a small start and her gaze darted over to Matthew.

Matthew’s eyes went wide and he rifled through the newspaper to cover up his nervous cough. Marilla shot him a warning look.

“Nevermind, it’s all fine, I’m about finished with this letter and then how about a game of checkers, Matthew?” Anne asked nervously.

Marilla rose and moved her chair to face Anne, before gently placing a hand on each shoulder. “It is real, Anne. I know it’s real, because I did not receive a letter begging for our blessing from an apparition,” she said with a wry smile. “You went through a trial to get here, but no more of this moping and doubting, young lady. I was led to believe that youthful romance was supposed to be an enjoyable experience.”

Anne pulled a very startled Marilla into a fierce hug. “Once again you display wisdom that I can only hope to achieve someday, Marilla.”

Marilla considered a lecture about letting her imagination create problems where none existed, but she decided against it, for now. The poor girl really had been through terrible heartache, after all. She caught Matthew’s eye as Anne still clung to her neck and gave him the kind of silent command that only a very assertive sister could manage.

Matthew cleared his throat. “Right…Anne?”

She turned in surprise at the sound. “Yes, Matthew?”

Matthew stood and stepped closer, still staring at his feet. “Gilbert’s letter was…very nice. You know we love you and we want you to be happy. He’s…a fine young man. I suppose I’ll ask him to go fishing when he’s around.”

Anne had a sudden, delightful vision of Matthew and Gilbert, sitting side by side in the rowboat, saying nothing at all for hours on end. Perhaps they should bring Jerry or Bash along. She bit back a giggle and stood to wrap her arms around Matthew’s neck. “Thank you, Matthew. It means a lot to me…and to Gilbert too, I know.”

“As long as you’re happy,” Matthew finally added.

“I am.”


	9. The Girls Find Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne's friends find out about Gilbert, and they are exactly how you might expect. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

“My last exam is finally over!” Anne exclaimed, dropping herself onto the chaise in a very unladylike fashion. “It’s a miracle I am alive, Diana! I stared at my books for so long that I began to dream of the words, floating in front of my eyes. I tried to imagine that I was a prisoner, locked in a tower, doomed to do nothing but read until I had lived out the punishment of an evil sorceress, but really it did nothing to soothe my exhaustion after the third or fourth night spent studying by candlelight.”

Diana patted her hair affectionately. “I am very sorry to hear your imagination failed you. Though,” she added with a smirk, “I really doubt that is what you dream about.”

Anne opened one exhausted eye just long enough to glare at her best friend. “You’re still not funny.”

“You’ll have grandchildren and it will still be funny to me,” Diana laughed. “So…when will he be home?” She gently poked her reluctant friend when no information was forthcoming.

“I am meeting his train tomorrow so that we can go home together.”

“You must be so excited!”

“I’m nervous!”

“What is there to be nervous about? He has been in love with you for ages! He’ll probably propose!”

“Who will propose?” Ruby Gillis stood in the doorway, bouncing on her toes with excitement.

“You are supposed to be at school!” Diana exclaimed, voice rising an octave.

“We all decided to come home and freshen up before we meet the boys,” Ruby replied with a dismissive wave. “Never mind that. Wait –“ she rushed to the stairs, “Girls, Anne is expecting a _proposal_!” Ruby made this announcement with a very Ruby-like squeal.

“A what?!” Tillie’s voice fairly boomed down the stairs, before she came running into the parlor, forgetting entirely that her dress was only half-buttoned.

“Mrs. Blackmore will have an affliction if she sees you like that in the parlor, Tillie; come here and I’ll help you,” Diana sighed.

“How can Anne be expecting a proposal when she hasn’t received a single suitor all semester?” Josie demanded upon her entrance, Jane trailing behind her. “Or have you found one in a book?” Josie delivered her harsh words with an amused twinkle that belied her humor. She couldn’t find it in herself to be as cruel to Anne as she once was.

“More importantly, we are just learning of this now? Unless you met him this afternoon, I think some explanation is in order,” Jane added matter-of-factly, though considering that her hair was only half-pinned, she thought the news was interesting enough to disrupt her toilette.

Anne stared at her friends, unusually quiet. “I…I’m really not expecting a proposal.”

Diana gave her a good-natured grin. “You should just tell them. They were about to find out, anyway.”

“Yes, but I planned to do it later, when there are other people around and they can’t ask too many questions…,” Anne cast a nervous glance back at the four girls standing before her. That last comment had sealed her fate, she realized only too late. Now they would ask every question under the sun.

“Anne, can I be a bridesmaid?” Ruby blurted out.

“Ruby,” Jane replied with a roll of her eyes, “she hasn’t even said who is proposing.”

“I am going to burst if you don’t tell us soon,” Tillie added, waving her hands in the air.

Anne glanced at Diana, who was nearly bursting with excitement herself. “Just tell them,” she said, taking Anne’s hand in hers. “They will be happy for you.”

Anne squeezed her hand for a moment and gathered her courage. “Alright. Again, I am _not_ expecting a proposal, but…I have a suitor.” She let out an uneven sigh. “It’s Gilbert.”

As a lover of big words, Anne was grateful that she had long-ago learned the meaning of ‘pandemonium’, for no other word could quite describe the next few moments of her life. At one point, Josie fell into her lap while Ruby trod accidentally on one of her feet, as she quite literally leaped into the air with glee. Everyone spoke at once, so that Anne had no real idea what anyone said, except for Tillie, who was giggling so hysterically that she had been rendered unable to speak.

“Wait – wait – wait – wait –“ Ruby finally interrupted, showing more command than she perhaps ever had in her 17 years of life to this point. “Anne can’t answer our questions if we’re all shouting, and I demand answers, Anne Shirley Cuthbert.” Anne wondered for a second if Ruby would harbor a bit of a grudge that Gilbert had fallen in love with _her_ , until – “Has he kissed you?!”

Evidently, Anne’s suddenly reddened face gave her away in an instant, and the squeals and screeches began again.

“We must know _everything_!” Tillie cried. “When did this happen?!”

“Well, we have been corresponding by letter and he wrote Matthew and Marilla for permission to court –“

“Yes, yes, that’s all nice, but when did he kiss you?! He’s been in Toronto!”

“The day before school started, when he stopped in Charlottetown on his way to Toronto. Out there, on the lawn,” she added, gesturing at the window.

“Anne Shirley Cuthbert, you got kissed on our doorstep over three months ago, and we’re just hearing about this now?!” Ruby demanded.

“Why do you keep using my full name like that?”

“Because I am scolding you! We could have been talking about this for the last three months, and instead you’re hiding away Gilbert’s love letters! What is the point of having your best girlfriends around if we can’t swoon over each other’s love lives?”

“Some people do other things with their time, Ruby,” Anne deadpanned.

“No, no, I’m afraid on this one Ruby is right,” Josie added, pursing her lips in amusement. “You really are obligated to tell us everything now, from the beginning.” She leaned in. “When did you start liking him?”

“I think the correct question is when did she realize she was madly in love with him,” Diana offered with a satisfied giggle of her own, earning her a sharp glare from her best friend.

“Well, probably since always, but I didn’t know for sure until the end of the summer,” Anne finally said, turning back to Josie.

“And he was courting that girl! Oh, Anne, it must have been devastating,” Ruby sighed.

Jane smacked her lightly on the arm. “I’m sure she’s thrilled you brought it up, too.”

Diana gripped Anne’s hand again and rescued her. “There were quite a few misunderstandings. Gilbert had always been smitten with her, as I long suspected,” she added with a triumphant glint in her eye, “but he thought Anne didn’t share his feelings. His courtship was only a friendly one and he decided he couldn’t enter into a marriage of convenience, not once he realized that he could never stop loving Anne.”

Their friends nearly swooned, and Tillie actually sat down hard in a chair to catch her breath.

“How did you find out, then?” Josie asked.

Diana continued, since Anne was too busy remembering the fateful day she last saw Gilbert at their door, gasping for air after he ran through the streets to find her. “We all thought he was engaged, but he never was, as I told you after I saw him on the train.” The girls nodded. Diana had carefully spread that bit of gossip as far and wide as she could so that Anne wouldn’t have to say anything. “What I didn’t tell you, is that I confronted him on the train for breaking Anne’s heart when it was painfully obvious that he loves her, and then leaving for Toronto without bothering to speak to Anne about any of this.” She broke into a jubilant grin. “Except, it turned out, that he had no idea of Anne’s feelings for him. He raced off the train to find her before he had to leave. You should have seen his face,” she added, eyes sparkling. “I’ve never seen someone so happy. He even forgot his bags on the train.”

Now Ruby actually did swoon, though Anne suspected it was mostly for show.

“So, then he found you?” Jane turned to Anne, not even glancing at Ruby’s collapsed body on the floor.

Anne nodded, blushing.

“What did he say?!” Ruby exclaimed, rising unsteadily to her feet.

Diana fought to hold back her amusement as Anne turned nearly crimson.

“Nothing, at first, but I was so surprised to see him, and I had only just learned that he wasn’t engaged,” she began, only to be interrupted when Diana nearly collapsed to the floor herself in a fit of laughter.

“He wasn’t there to talk!” Diana nearly shouted between gasps.

“Diana!”

“What? I saw what I saw.” The girls exchanged amused glances.

“He asked me if I truly had feelings for him and we talked about writing to each other,” Anne insisted, though she was nearly ready to burst into laughter as well. It had all been terribly swoon-worthy, after all.

“Uh huh, in between all the kisses?” Diana teased.

“All?!” That chorus came from all four of their friends.

“He had better propose,” Jane offered.

Diana shot her an exasperated look. “He’s been in love with her forever and said, _to me_ , that he will always be in love with her. It doesn’t matter when he proposes – he’s Anne’s.” Anne couldn’t help but smile. _He’s mine, and I’m his, and everyone will know it_ , she thought, biting her lip a little in anticipation of tomorrow.

“Wait, Diana, you always thought he was smitten with Anne?” Josie exclaimed.

“Didn’t you? He found every excuse he could to talk to her, even if it was to rile her up. Cole thought so, too.”

“After the way everything started, I guess I didn’t consider it,” Josie murmured, though as she thought back, he did seem to find his way to Anne’s desk quite often, pretending to discuss some point in the curriculum.

“Me neither,” Anne said with a shake of her head.

“Besides, Anne seemed to dislike him so much…,” Ruby added. “You specifically told me that you were not a Gilbert Blythe fan!”

“A very cute boy had just pulled my hair and called me Carrots! I was a bit put out with him! It turns out that he thought _I_ was cute and the nickname was some kind of compliment, but boy was he ever wrong….”

“Now that you mention it, he did stare at her a lot. And he never tried to give the rest of us apples. Sorry, Ruby,” Tillie said.

“No, no, my childish crush is long over.”

“You mean because your very grown-up crush likes you back?” The squealing started again in earnest.

They giggled and reminisced, swooning again when Anne dared to reveal a few select sweet musings from Gilbert’s letters.

They were all discussing double date ideas for Moody, Ruby, Gilbert, and Anne, when a knock on the door brought them back to reality. Jane flew up the stairs to finish her hair, just as Ruby let in their four companions for the evening.

“Terribly sorry, boys, you’ll have to wait a minute here. We need a to finish preparations and you aren’t allowed in the parlor on Fridays.”

“What have you been doing all this time, then?” That question came from Roy Gardner, who seemed to think his schedule was too important to stoop to waiting on a woman. Anne was more than happy to avoid spending much time in his company.

“Talking about Anne’s beau!” Ruby exclaimed.

“Anne has a beau?” Moody asked politely, though he was only mildly interested. Roy and Charlie both cast a sideways glance at Anne, looking decidedly less pleased. Paul wasn’t even listening.

Anne leaned against the parlor door but said nothing. The cat was out of the bag, after all, so she might as well get used to a bit of gossip.

“It’s Gilbert!” Ruby cried, this time crashing into Moody’s arms as she jumped with excitement.

“ _What_?” That came from Charlie.

Moody cast an amused glance at Anne over Ruby’s head. “I always wondered…,” he said.


	10. Reunited and it feels so good...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gilbert and Anne are reunited, but because it's them, it doesn't quite work out as they hoped...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be doing a few "reunion" chapters, so don't worry, they'll be stupidly cute several times, and we'll get to hear more teasing.

Anne could be counted on to venture deep into her most theatrical tendencies when she felt the situation called for it, but today it was simply too much for Diana.

“Anne, you have been pacing all morning. We redid your hair twice, your dress is perfect, we’ve pinched your cheeks and we used those lavender sachets on your undergarments. You look – and smell – perfect, and you need to stop worrying.”

“But it’s been months!” Anne cried. “I know I’m being a bit silly –“

“A bit might be understating things, Anne…”

“BUT, we haven’t seen each other in person all that time. He has started a new school, in a big, exciting city. I don’t see how my rambling letters could possibly compete with such wonders –“

“For the same reason that your head hasn’t turned just because Roy, and Charlie, and those two other boys in your class asked to come calling on you,” Diana said with a sly grin. “You had plenty of excitement of your own.”

It had been amusing to watch Anne find herself with a sudden wave of potential suitors, just as her heart was firmly claimed. She couldn’t tell them she was courting, so she fell back on the excuse that she was interested in someone else, and far too busy with studying, anyway. Her excuses hadn’t worked particularly well, though, to Anne’s dismay and Diana’s delight.

“There is nothing exciting about turning down Charlie Sloane or Roy Gardner,” Anne said with a shiver. “Roy is insufferable.”

“At least he’s handsome to make up for it, a bit. Does Gilbert know he has competition?”

“There is no competition, _as you well know_ , so I didn’t think to mention it.”

A knock at the door interrupted Diana before she could continue her teasing or pinch Anne’s cheeks again, as she had gone pale talking herself into a nonexistent crisis. They were not expecting any visitors, so Diana jumped up from her place on the chaise as soon as she heard Anne open the door and gasp.

“I thought we were meeting at the station?!” She could have kicked herself for that greeting, but somehow, he had done it again. Here he was, slightly out of breath again for some reason, at her door.

“I found an earlier train so I thought I would escort you to the station.”

Diana didn’t bother greeting Gilbert and instead raced up the stairs to hold back the other girls from interrupting their reunion.

“Hi,” he said softly, nose scrunching slightly as his eyes scanned over her, like he couldn’t quite believe she was really there. Whatever nerves she felt disappeared instantly, and her cheeks flushed brilliant pink again. She smoothed away a non-existent wrinkle on her dress and beamed back at him.

“I missed you,” she breathed, before her eyes widened as she realized she had blurted out that admission without so much as a ‘hello.’

He bit his lip, eyes fixed on Anne, and stepped forward into the hall, closing the door firmly behind him. Anne found herself wrapped in his embrace before she could even think of a clever way to fix her embarrassing greeting. She could feel one arm wrapped tightly around her waist, the other the back of her neck.

“I meant to do this the last time I was here, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since,” he murmured into her ear. She relaxed into him, forehead resting on his shoulder. “I missed you too, Anne-girl.”

_My handsome suitor has a nickname for me_ , she thought, secretly grinning into his coat and sliding her hands around to his back. It was one thing to see it in his letters, and another thing to hear his warm, welcoming voice whisper it while holding her close. Why had she ever bothered to worry?

Suddenly the front door opened, crashing Gilbert into her.

“Are we ready to – oh! Sorry Gilbert,” Tillie exclaimed.

“Um, nice to see you,” Gilbert said, disentangling himself from Anne so fast he accidently banged his head into the wall. Anne’s immediately flew over to him in worry, which certainly destroyed whatever distance Gilbert was pretending they had.

“It looks like I _interrupted something_ ,” Tillie giggled. “It’s so nice that your _beau_ is going to escort you home –“

“Tillie!” Diana hissed from up the stairs. “Why don’t you come finish packing? Ruby – what are you doing?”

“Well if Tillie is already down there then we might well all go! The moment is ruined anyway.”

Anne very much wished she could sink into the ground. If only Mrs. Blackmore hadn’t already left; the girls wouldn’t dare carry on like this if she were around. If only her friends had taken the morning train like they originally planned. If only…if only…

“I’m sorry Anne, I tried. They were raised by wolves,” Diana sighed. “Let’s all get our bags. We don’t have much time, anyway.”

Anne quickly pulled Gilbert into the parlor as the rest of them disappeared to collect their things. “Sorry about that.”

“I guess they know, then?”

“Yes, I wanted to wait until you were here, but I had to tell them last night. I maintain it was Diana’s fault.”

“What did she do?”

Anne wasn’t about to tell him the truth, so she replied lightly, “Oh, she just said we were courting, at a time when she thought no one else was home.”

“She said Anne was expecting a proposal!” Josie shouted from the hallway.

“I said I wasn’t!” Anne cried.

“Everyone, leave them alone!” They could hear Diana’s voice faintly from up the stairs. “Wolves! All of you!”

Anne buried her face in her hands. “I should have met you at home. My friends are crazy.”

Gilbert laughed softly and glanced at the door, before gently pulling Anne back to him. “If it makes you feel any better, my friends at school are just as bad. You just can’t hear what they say, thank goodness.”

“That does make me feel a little better. What do they say?”

“Oh no, I’m not telling.”

“It’s only fair! Josie’s shouting about proposals and…and now I brought it up again.” She groaned. “How about we meet again in Avonlea and we pretend this part didn’t happen?”

“Why would I do that when I think you look so pretty when you’re embarrassed?” He caught her chin lightly and she met his gaze. “I waited months to see you – I’m not giving up any more time.”

Now it was Anne’s turn to take a quick glance at the door, before she stretched up to give him a soft kiss, then pulled back to enjoy his look of surprise.

The thumping and chattering on the stairs warned them that their moment was over, and Anne quickly rushed to wrap herself in her coat and scarf. Gilbert seized the opportunity to fuss over her a bit and carefully placed her knit cap over her upswept hair, fingers accidentally brushing lightly over her ears as he adjusted it. She paused and he heard her breath hitch, just a bit.

“You can be in love some other time,” Josie said from the doorway just then. “We should hurry to get seats all together.”

“We are _not_ sitting with them,” Anne whispered. Gilbert flashed her a conspiratorial smile and nodded.

Anne let out another groan when they arrived at the train station, only to discover that Moody, Charlie, and one of the Pauls were also taking the same train home. They all greeted Gilbert, though Charlie was glaring at him resentfully and gave him only a short nod. Gilbert fought the petty urge to pull Anne closer to him and turned to Moody.

“I hear things are going well at Queens?”

Moody nodded. “You must have heard from Anne?”

“Yes, she knew I’d want to hear about what I’ve been missing.”

“So you didn’t end up going to Paris?” Moody said quietly while the girls were distracted. “Must have been hard, giving that up.”

“Please tell me you didn’t say that to Anne?!”

“No!” Moody replied, looking mildly insulted.

“Would you want to be married to one of our classmates, other than Ruby, for the rest of your life, just to go to a school for a few years? Even if they’re nice enough?”

Moody paused. “Right. Back when it came up, I didn’t think about it like that.”

“Because you didn’t have to.”

“You did pay an awful lot of attention to Anne…”

Gilbert was rescued from reliving any more ancient history when Ruby rushed over and looped her arm through Moody’s. “Let’s go find seats!”

Gilbert held out his hand to Anne just as she was about to board the train. Of course, his Anne-girl had no need for any man to help her up the steps, but she flashed him a smile that shot through his heart and wrapped her fingers around his. He could already see their friends gathered together in the train car before them, looking back at them expectantly. He ascended the steps behind her, still holding her hand, and pulled her back slightly so that his lips nearly touched her ear.

"Just so you know, this is already the best homecoming I've ever had."


	11. Reactions in Avonlea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How do the adults of Avonlea (particularly Rachel) react when Anne and Gilbert come home?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I've been slow with updates! The flu plus responsibilities plus writer's block = very slow writing. :(
> 
> I know technically Anne and Gilbert are sort of adults here too, but let's call this the reaction of the over-30 crowd.

Rachel Lynde could always be trusted to come running, when good gossip presented itself in front of her door. Marilla had long suspected that Rachel chose her home, as it was happily situated at a perfect bend on the main road to Avonlea, precisely so that good gossip would present itself at her door regularly. So when Rachel marched into Marilla’s kitchen only thirty minutes after Anne and Gilbert returned home for Christmas break, Marilla could barely stifle a laugh. Rachel was as predictable as a grandfather clock. She must have nearly sprinted out the door after she saw Bash’s carriage pass on the road.

“Rachel, what brings you here?” she asked innocently, eyes never leaving the stove. She was busily preparing a welcome home feast for Anne and Gilbert. Hazel was expected to arrive any minute to assist with the preparations. Marilla fully expected that many of their dinners would be like this in the future – the combined Cuthbert/Blythe/LaCroix families celebrating together.

Rachel nearly broke her neck trying to look around for Anne without attracting attention to her plan, with little success. “Anne isn’t here?” Rachel asked by way of greeting.

“No, she is not.”

“Marilla, are you aware that Anne was in a carriage, coming from Carmody, with Sebastian and Gilbert?”

Marilla didn’t bother concealing an annoyed sigh. “Did you think that somehow it would escape my attention?”

“What on earth are they doing?”

Marilla considered every sarcastic answer under the sun, from “eloping” to “highway robbery”, but she supposed the real answer would be satisfying enough, if the goal was to shock Rachel. “Gilbert just returned from Toronto and Anne accompanied him on the train ride from Charlottetown. They are over at the Blythe place, for a little while.”

“Anne is visiting them first? Before coming home?”

Marilla knew from the start that Rachel wouldn’t cease this line of questioning until she had the answers she craved, but this would save the kids the exhaustion of having to tell Rachel themselves. “Yes, and then they are coming back here for a dinner with all of us.” Rachel’s look of puzzlement was strangely delightful. Marilla decided to enjoy the theatrics that were sure to come, just a bit, and sighed loudly just for the effect. “Anne and Gilbert are courting, so the families are having a meal together.”

Seeing the look on Rachel’s face, she wondered if it was unfair to Anne that she wouldn’t have a chance to enjoy it.

“Well I, I…really?” Rachel dropped herself into a chair, uncharacteristically silent as she accepted a cup of tea. “How did this happen?” She asked, a slow, satisfied grin spreading over her face.

Marilla didn’t bother concealing her own satisfied grin. “I think…it has been a long time coming, but Gilbert wrote to Matthew and me to ask for our blessing a couple of months back. They have been corresponding since they went to school.”

Rachel nodded firmly. “I am happy to hear that he did things properly, that’s for sure and certain. Not that I would expect Anne to worry about such things, so it’s good that one of them has some sense of propriety here.”

Marilla had seen the two of them together for a few minutes and strongly suspected that Rachel would promptly stop complimenting Gilbert’s sense of propriety as soon as she actually saw the young man with his sweetheart. The two of them were not particularly good at maintaining any kind of appropriate distance. It was a wonder that Matthew hadn’t run for the barn immediately, watching their girl receive that kind of attention, but she supposed he had already survived Anne’s surprise announcement that she was in love with Gilbert. Matthew found a way to take most things in stride, as long as Anne was happy.

Rachel took a few more sips of tea in silence. Marilla would ordinarily be thrilled to see that Rachel Lynde could, in fact, allow her tongue a few moments’ rest, but she suspected that Rachel was simply deciding which neighbor to visit first. The whole of Avonlea was sure to know of the new couple by nightfall. Suddenly, Rachel’s eyes shot up to Marilla.

“Did he throw over that Charlottetown girl for Anne?” Rachel’s voice was half shock and half glee. Marilla suppressed an eyeroll. Rachel might be one for propriety, but she was also fond of an exciting tale, and Marilla planned to use that to her full advantage.

“Rachel, don’t you think that we should leave those concerns to the kids?” She knew full well that Rachel’s answer to that question would be ‘no’, but she couldn’t quite resist having a bit more fun with her nosy friend.

“Well, you know people will talk, Marilla. We need to be sure that we suppress any unfair gossip right away.” Now Marilla genuinely smiled. Rachel was truly so predictable.

“I suppose you’re right, Rachel,” Marilla replied evenly. “If they have _respectable members of the community_ offering support and sharing the truth, I am sure everything will be just fine.”

Rachel nearly concealed her satisfied smirk, but not quite. “Precisely. A few words from the right people will go a long way.” She leaned over to Marilla, nearly sliding off her chair in excitement. “So, how did it happen?”

“I believe they both had feelings for each other for a long time, but each believed that the other didn’t share those feelings.”

“Oh, the poor dears,” Rachel replied with a shake of her head. “Young heartache is so difficult. You know, when I was about Anne’s age, I thought I would lose my Thomas to Gertrude Bell. Can you imagine?!” Marilla wondered if Gertrude Bell would have been a less…opinionated…wife, but she supposed Thomas didn’t complain.

“Anyway, as I’m sure you heard before, Gilbert’s prior courtship was a friendship and not a love match. But,” she continued, knowing Rachel would not be able to resist swooning at the next part, “Gilbert still believed Anne did not share his feelings when he ended things. When he asked to court Anne, he told Matthew and I that he decided he could marry only for love, and he realized he will only ever love Anne.”

Now Rachel’s jaw dropped, and Marilla knew that her plan would work perfectly. “Well that’s – I’ve never heard – how sweet…”

“Yes, and when he learned from Diana Barry on the train to Charlottetown that Anne shared his feelings, he forgot his bags and ran off the train so that he could find her and tell her how he felt.”

“Marilla!”

They chatted for a few more minutes about Gilbert’s moving letter to Matthew and Marilla, as well as his career prospects. Rachel worried that Gilbert would drag Anne along to Toronto with him, but Marilla wasn’t about to bother worrying about that right now. Hazel arrived to help with dinner, and Rachel was a bit put out to learn that she already knew all about this exciting development.

“I live with Sebastian, don’t I? He’s been crowing about it for months, saying that he knew since the ship that Gilbert was gone over Anne.” Hazel shook her head. “Poor Gilbert, he’s going to be in for it now that he’s home.”

Rachel forgot her annoyance immediately. “It’s been going on for that long, you say? What else did Bash tell you about Gilbert?”

“Rachel…,” Marilla warned.

As if on cue, the young man in question appeared at the kitchen door just then, Anne in tow. Rachel apprised them both as they shrugged out of their coats. She didn’t fail to notice that Gilbert casually wrapped his hand around Anne’s waist as he took her coat from her. It was a good thing they were courting, but as it was Rachel resolved to have a few words with them about propriety in courtship. More importantly, the young man really ought to think about proposing if they were already planning family dinners and sharing such intimate touches. She would discuss it with Marilla later.

. . .

The next morning, when the new couple arrived at church arm-in-arm, Marilla was fairly accosted by nearly every matron in town, so it seemed, gushing that Anne had “enraptured” their dear Gilbert. It seemed particularly interesting that several matrons actually used the term “enraptured,” as though they had been reading pages from the same romantic novel. Rachel was even more remarkably efficient than Marilla had ever imagined.

Diana was also keeping a close watch over her friend, though she noted with approval that Gilbert hadn’t let Anne out of his sight and played the attentive beau to perfection. Their friends had swarmed them again the moment they could, while the rest of the congregation observed them with interest.

“Don’t you think you’re getting out of this again, you two,” Tillie demanded. “Anne hardly told us anything, and apparently you’ve been hiding your feelings for years?!”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Gilbert started desperately, until he saw Anne’s face out of the corner of his eye and sucked in a deep breath. This wasn’t the time to hide from the truth. However complicated it might have felt at the time, the truth in his heart had always been simple. He’d been in love with her all along, and he’d nearly ruined it with idiocy and pride. Diana’s letter flashed in his mind as he looked out at their friends.

“It sounds like you pretty much know. I’ve been smitten with Anne since the very first, and I thought she didn’t feel the same. Thank God for Diana,” he finished with a short laugh.

“It my fault for being so unkind to him,” Anne added with a squeeze of his hand. “If only I didn’t put my foot in it all the time!”

“But now it’s all worked out and you’re _courting_!” Ruby exclaimed. “You simply must go on a double-date with me and Moody tonight. It’s the Christmas panto!”

Gilbert had no idea what a double date entailed, but since Anne and Ruby seemed excited, he smiled widely and nodded. If this is what it took to be the perfect suitor, then this is what he would do.

. . .

Jane arrived at church last. She desperately wished her brother would live somewhere else, so that he could skip church altogether and stop making the rest of them late. Prissy had said as much to him this morning, to Jane’s delight, though their father had threatened to prevent Prissy from visiting the family if she insisted on saying such things.

The Andrews family arrived just in time to witness Avonlea’s new couple standing suspiciously close together, still fielding questions from everyone.

“Is there something going on between Anne and Gilbert?” Prissy asked.

“Er, yes. Anne told us the other day – they’re courting.”

Prissy would have complained that her sister never told her anything interesting, but she didn’t bother to waste her breath. Jane was not one to share news with her family. More to the point, Billy scowled at the mere mention of Anne, and her mother was noticeably tense. Prissy hopped out of the carriage as fast as she could, ignoring Billy’s outstretched hand, and hurried over to greet everyone just as they all began to file into the church.

Rachel was positively beaming by the time she sidled over to Mrs. Andrews.

“I assume you heard about Anne, from Jane?” she asked.

“Yes, just now,” Mrs. Andrews replied crisply.

“It is quite the tale, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Andrews tolerated Anne’s presence at the boarding house while her Jane was at Queen’s, but she had no interest in any _tale_ involving her courtship to Gilbert. “I would say it’s a shame that John Blythe isn’t here to talk some sense into the boy, before he goes choosing an orphan from someplace over an eligible Island girl.”

Rachel drew herself up to her full height and huffed, “Apparently you have forgotten that she tied for first with Gilbert on the Queen’s exam, which I would think makes her quite an _eligible Island girl_.” Mrs. Andrews went white, too shocked to respond. “More to the point, I should think you didn’t know John Blythe at all, if you think he would have wanted Gilbert to give up the girl he’s always admired over such…petty things.” Rachel noted with satisfaction that a few of her friends had witnessed this encounter and were smiling at her with approval.

. . .

Ordinarily, Anne daydreamed through most of the service. Today, she still didn’t hear most of the minister’s (criminally dull, in her opinion) sermon, for an entirely different reason. Though she resolved to turn her head as little as possible, she could positively feel the eyes looking at her and Gilbert sitting together. Though she knew her friends were happy for her, she noted with some unease that not every face she had seen in the crowd showed approval.

 _You resolved to be a thorn in their side_ , she reminded herself firmly. _You can’t do that if you worry at every turn about what they think_. Her nerves refused to subside, though, and she was digging her nails in the backs of her hands as she willed herself to look straight at the minister and nowhere else. _But it’s one thing for them to judge me, and another for them to judge him._

Before she could wallow in her fears any longer, she felt Gilbert’s fingers wrap firmly around hers. “What can I do to fix that frown on your face?” He murmured as they stood for the final hymn. She looked up and caught his tender gaze.

 _We’ll be fine_ , a soothing voice in her head, one that sounded suspiciously like Gilbert, reassured her. She finally let out a breath. It seemed like she had been holding it since they arrived.

“You already fixed it,” she said, wishing very much that she could do as she pleased and kiss him just then. She wasn’t entirely ready to cause the entire room to faint, though, so she merely resolved to thoroughly kiss him later.

Mr. Barry caught Gilbert on their way down the steps after the service. “Gilbert! Wonderful to see you after all these months!” Mr. Barry greeted him with a firm handshake.

“You too! I hear from Sebastian that things have been going well.”

“Oh yes, he has an excellent head for business. You are fortunate in your choice of partner.”

“I’d say that is true in more ways than one,” Gilbert said wistfully, gazing at Anne, who was now chatting animatedly with Miss Stacy and Diana.

“About that – I hear you are doing well in Toronto. It is…admirable, to make your way on your own merit,” Mr. Barry said a bit awkwardly. “Though I will warn you – Diana is very protective of Anne. So, as Diana’s father, I hope you know it is my job to protect Anne much as her own father would. And I did have _eyes_ that day in Charlottetown.”

Gilbert flushed crimson and stared at the dirt. “Did you happen to mention that day to the Cuthberts?”

“No. I have been a young man myself so I do have some sympathies. I mean only to say, I hope you understand that there are expectations –“

“I can assure you that Anne knows exactly how serious I am. You will have no cause for concern on that front.” Gilbert glanced over to see that Diana was subtly listening to their conversation with a satisfied grin. Gilbert threw her an admiring smirk. He began to suspect that Diana Barry could be far more dangerous than Anne. Anne might throw a slate to his head – Diana would rig a piano to fall on it instead. No warning that way and no chance of survival.

. . .

By Sunday night, Gilbert was beginning to understand the advantages of a small family. At times, when he was a child, he felt pangs of sadness that he had no siblings to play with, or a mother to dote on him while his father was doing chores. Now, though, he had Bash to mock him, Mrs. LaCroix to dote on him, Elijah to generally disrupt things (he was still learning his way around the farm and made more than a few mistakes, to Bash’s eternal frustration), and Delly to demand her uncle’s attention. It felt wonderful to see his family home full of life and laughter, just as his father would have hoped.

At the moment, though, he would have given anything to throw them all out so he could find a moment alone with Anne.


	12. Gilbert Can't Catch a Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bash: hi and I win  
> Gilbert: I just want to make out with my girlfriend  
> Rachel: hi, I have some questions  
> Gilbert: I just want to make out with my girlfriend  
> Moody and Ruby: …  
> Gilbert: I just want to make out with my girlfriend  
> Gilbert: I just want to make out with my girlfriend  
> Jerry: I know  
> Billy: *exists*  
> Gilbert: FFS

It seemed that all their friends and loved ones were determined to spend every possible moment with them over the Christmas break, much to Gilbert’s chagrin.

After their friends tried to tease and cajole them into sharing their love story on the train, Anne and Gilbert had at least found seats in another car to avoid putting up with that nonsense for a full hour. It had soothed his anxious heart to sit close to her and talk, though they still had to maintain a certain distance and he couldn’t risk saying anything that he didn’t want overheard. Still, he had been nervous for days about their reunion. After everything they had been through, it seemed too much to hope that he was really going to spend his Christmas with the Anne from her letters. They slid easily into conversation, though, and the last of his anxiety was replaced, first with peace, and then with an overwhelming desire to transport them back to the empty yard outside her boarding house so that he could pull her close and kiss her. The rules of propriety were most inconvenient.

To his dismay, Bash had been the one to collect them at the station. Gilbert had hoped Matthew would come, for at least he could be counted on to say very little and Gilbert would be allowed to spend the ride gazing happily at his sweetheart. Instead, the humiliation began the second they stepped onto the platform at Carmody and didn’t end until they finally arrived home.

“I win, I win,” Bash belted out in his best baritone, complete with a dance routine that seemed to have grown more elaborate since the last time Gilbert witnessed it.

“People are staring,” Gilbert ground out, eyes darting between Bash’s exuberant show and Anne’s reaction. He was somehow even more horrified when he realized that Anne was not displaying the slightest sign of surprise. _Oh God, she’s already seen the victory dance, hasn’t she?_ Leaving the love of his life behind in PEI, with countless opportunities to interact with his relentlessly mocking brother, was starting to seem like a very bad idea.

Bash chattered the entire ride home.

“I’m just saying that Blythe here thinks salt is a _seasoning_. I’ve tried training him, but I think I might have to leave it to you. I’m sure your methods of persuasion will be far more effective than mine –“

“Do you think it will snow tonight?” Gilbert interjected, staring up at the sky with an exaggerated turn of his head.

“No,” Bash replied shortly. “So as I was saying, he also burnt biscuits once, so I’m not entirely sure he knows how a clock works.”

“Well thank goodness I can at least make biscuits, and shepherd’s pie,” Anne laughed. Gilbert’s gaze went soft as he nodded his agreement.

“Oh, you remember, do you?” Anne said as she caught his eye.

“How could I forget that day?”

Bash leaned over to Anne. “See, I told you,” he said knowingly, and Gilbert felt his stomach drop as he tried to imagine just what conversations he had missed.

“I was really, really hoping you had forgotten,” Anne admitted, staring at her lap.

Gilbert lifted his hand to her face, pretending to adjust her hat over her ears. For once, Bash exercised a hint of discretion and looked away. “It was delicious,” he murmured, holding her gaze until he could see her breath begin to quicken. He could feel the heat radiating from her, despite the December chill.

“Delly has tried taking a few steps!” Bash suddenly exclaimed, and Gilbert nearly toppled into Anne as he snapped back to reality.

After Gilbert helped Anne out of the carriage when they arrived at Green Gables, Bash subtly pulled him back to help tie the horses.

“You might wanna practice your…face,” Bash started, waving his hand in Gilbert’s direction, “before you spend more time with the Cuthberts. I don’t have to be a mind reader to know what you’re thinking, and what you’re thinking is likely to get you thrown out of the house.”

“I was not thinking anything!” Gilbert cried.

“Sure you weren’t,” Bash chuckled. “Now you just need to tell your face that.”

Their first family meal together was a joyous event, full of laughter and lively conversation. Gilbert wanted to drink in every second of it, seeing the Cuthberts’ table groaning with food and surrounded by loved ones. Anne sat next to him and he grasped her hand whenever he could. At one point, Bash began to sing an old Trinidadian song to Delly, and Gilbert was nearly moved to tears. _This is our life, together, from now on_ , he realized. He could hardly believe it had come true, but now he was looking out at his future, and Anne was holding his hand.

Of course, the spell was broken after supper, when Bash started in again. “You really should take my advice sometimes. Maybe stare at the wall instead of at Anne.”

“I…”

“That’s what I thought. Now, maybe it’s time to go home before you kill Matthew on your first visit.”

“Shouldn’t I at least say goodbye to Anne?”

“From a solid five feet away, yes.”

. . .

Then after Sunday church, there was family dinner, which for some reason also included Rachel and Thomas Lynde. Anne was equally confused, until Rachel began peppering the two of them with questions before she had even settled her napkin in her lap. Anne caught Marilla’s apologetic shrug and realized in an instant that Rachel had invited herself.

“So Gilbert, you’ve been after Anne for years, I hear?”

Gilbert buttered his bread with all the precision of a surgeon as he searched of an answer to that question that wouldn’t result in a thousand more questions. “Well, we were both so young so I don’t think that _after_ her is the right way to describe it but –“

“A schoolroom romance! Oh, we remember how that is, don’t we Thomas? Eyeing each other across the aisle…of course then Thomas proposed as soon as our school days were over, as is _appropriate_ in those circumstances.” Rachel eyed the young lovers in front of her with an expectant raised brow.

Matthew knocked over his water glass, though whether by accident or on purpose was anyone’s guess. “Sorry,” he mumbled. Marilla and Anne leaped from the table to mop up the mess while everyone else rescued kitchenware and food from the spreading water.

“Rachel,” Anne started, having a flash of inspiration once they all settled back to their meal, “I hear your youngest has started courting? And how is your new granddaughter? I heard she is simply rapturously beautiful.”

Fortunately, the only thing Rachel loved more than talking about other people was talking about herself (provided the news was good), so she happily indulged Anne’s questions for a good portion of the meal. Unfortunately, she also had an excellent memory, and eventually Anne ran out of questions about grandchildren.

“So Anne, did you try to catch Gilbert? It surely didn’t seem to me like you were doing anything to attract a man,” she added, impervious to Marilla’s unconcealed eyeroll, “but perhaps he saw…something, that the rest of us did not.”

Anne decided to ignore that mild insult, considering that she had, in fact, attracted several men anyway. She had at least learned enough about holding her tongue that she didn’t mention her recent abundance of potential suitors. “I did try threading ribbons in my braids once to look prettier, though I suppose that wasn’t for Gilbert.”

“I don’t remember that,” Gilbert added.

“You were away then. Cole helped me,” Anne said matter-of-factly, missing that Gilbert’s face fell, just a bit.

Anne suggested that she and Gilbert should do the dishes after dinner, so that everyone else would have a chance to rest in the parlor.

“I thought she was going to make us describe every encounter we’ve had over the last three years! Is nothing sacred in this town?” Anne hissed under her breath as she scrubbed a pot with unnecessary vehemence. “Must everyone know everything?!”

“Um, I think the answer is pretty clear.”

“But asking you the exact day you fell in love with me! The nerve!” Gilbert jumped out of the way of a stream of soapy water as Anne plunged her hand into the sink.

“Well, that was an easy question, though, since it was that very first day.” Anne was left staring at him, eyes welling with joyful tears, until Marilla interrupted to request that Anne not drip dirty water all over her floor.

. . . 

Gilbert was already feeling a slight pounding behind his eyes by the time Rachel left. He was about to suggest that they could spend a little time at his house (perhaps alone, in the parlor), when he heard Anne say to Marilla:

“Should I change dresses before we go to the panto? Moody and Ruby will be here to pick us up soon. Moody’s father is letting him borrow their carriage! It is so thrilling to be out on an evening excursion!”

Gilbert feigned interest in a curio cabinet to avoid betraying his dread. He had forgotten about the double date, and he wished for all the world that they could postpone it to another day.

“Ruby is so excited that we can go with them. She says she doesn’t understand what Tillie sees in either of the Pauls, so she really wanted another couple for double dates. And ugh, she once had to double with Josie and Roy Gardner. There must be medieval forms of torture more pleasant.”

“You shouldn’t judge your classmates so harshly, Anne,” Marilla admonished her.

“If you had to spend time in Roy Gardner’s company, you would understand.”

Anne chose her blue velvet dress for the evening, hoping Gilbert would like it. She accomplished her goal far more than she could have ever hoped. He was grateful that no one else was around when she came down the stairs, just then, because he didn’t have nearly enough self control to avoid sweeping his gaze over her from head to toe with open admiration. He fairly itched to touch her, as he remembered the softness of her dress under his fingers when he kissed her that first time. He certainly hadn’t fooled Anne at all, and he could see that she was watching for his reaction as she stepped in front of him.

“I didn’t say a lot of things that I should have, back in Charlottetown that day, but I definitely should have said that you look…beautiful, in that dress. I mean, you always look beautiful but I have very fond memories of this dress –“

Anne rescued him from his whispered rambling. “I wore it on purpose because I have fond memories too.”

The sound of footsteps, both from the hallway and from the porch steps, forced them apart just as Gilbert had reached out to feel the velvet under his fingers again. He could hear Ruby’s chatter even before Marilla opened the door.

Gilbert still had no idea what exactly he was supposed to do on a double date, but fortunately Ruby was content to keep a conversation going for the entire carriage ride to the panto, her body turned nearly the entire way around so that she could speak to Anne, who was sitting behind her. Moody was driving and hardly spoke, so Gilbert hardly spoke, either. They arrived in town to find that most of their friends and neighbors were also there, and he could see the Cuthberts’ carriage approaching in the distance.

Gilbert helped Moody with the horses. “I hear this isn’t the first time you’ve been on a double date with Ruby.”

“Yes, usually with Tillie or Josie,” Moody said flatly. “It’s more…proper this way, I guess. She has a point there.”

“How nice,” Gilbert replied, equally unenthusiastic.

“But they look happy, don’t they?” Moody was looking at Ruby with a soft expression that Gilbert had never noticed before, though he understood its meaning in an instant. Gilbert glanced over at Anne and Ruby, walking arm-in-arm, giggling as they remembered their earlier Christmas panto.

“You’re right there; it is good to see them laugh.”

“That is the idea, I think.” Ruby turned to beckon Moody to her side, and his face split into a wide grin as he hurried to catch up with her. Gilbert began to suspect that he could learn a thing or two about being a suitor from his friend.

The panto was great fun, and he began to see the appeal of dates, even double dates. It was very different, being with Anne like this. He hadn’t been able to fully relax around her in the past, and his outings with Winifred had been pleasant but more, well, staid. It felt like he had been playing a part. This, though, was just Anne, and he could be exactly who he had always wanted to be.

After a time, Gilbert’s attention wandered as he tried to decide how to arrange a walk home with Anne, alone. As they left the building, he tried casually thanking their friends for suggesting the double date and offered Anne his arm so that they could leave.

“We’ll take you home!” Ruby suggested.

“We could walk,” Gilbert tried desperately.

“Oh nonsense, it’s cold and the carriage will be ever so much faster. Besides, it is getting very late! See, Mr. and Miss Cuthbert just left. They’ll be expecting Anne home soon.”

Gilbert took one look at Anne’s face and realized she thought that Ruby was probably correct about Matthew and Marilla. He wondered if it would be unmanly to cry in despair. Moody caught his eye and gave a sympathetic grin.

Gilbert did manage to convince them to leave him behind at Green Gables, insisting that it would be easy enough to walk from there. Moody wisely departed before Ruby could object, and Anne and Gilbert stood awkwardly on the porch for a moment while they waited for their friends to turn down the road.

Gilbert finally broke the silence. “That was…fun.”

“Yes, it was,” Anne agreed. A fierce gust of wind swept over the porch, and Anne shivered. Gilbert stepped closer to her to warm her and gently moved them closer to the house, out of the cold as much as possible. He could see her face better from this position, and the tenderness was so unmistakable he felt a surge of emotion that must have been obvious in his expression, as well. Sometimes he still couldn’t believe that her loving gazes were really for him, even though she left him with no doubt of her feelings. He thought of a thousand things he could say to her just then, but decided to start slowly.

“We should have many more dates.”

“Maybe without Ruby and Moody?”

“Maybe some of them should just be for the two of us,” he said, his voice sounding unusually deep even to his own ears. He took another step to close the rest of the distance between them, pulling off his glove to rest a hand on her cheek. A moving figure in the dark caught his eye just as he opened his mouth, and he quickly pushed Anne behind him as he turned to peer out into the night. He sighed, first in relief, and then in frustration. It was Jerry, who had returned from his day off and had just finished with the horses.

“Good to see you, Gilbert,” Jerry said, shaking his hand.

“Good to see you, too,” Gilbert replied, hoping he sounded more sincere than he felt.

“It’s freezing out here. We should go inside.” The three of them stood in silence for beat, Gilbert never taking his eyes from Anne, before Jerry turned to him. “Au revoir.”

“Yes, Jerry, _au revoir_ ,” Anne said pointedly.

Jerry threw a teasing grin at her. “I’m just saying, the Cuthberts can probably see you out here.”

“Go inside right now or never ask me for advice about girls again.”

Anne turned back to Gilbert with a defeated sigh as the door closed behind Jerry. “I always thought having a brother would be terrible, and it turns out I was right.”

Gilbert’s laughter broke his tension a bit, and he pulled her to a spot that couldn’t be seen from the window. He didn’t bother moving tentatively anymore. He slid one arm around her waist and tangled a hand into her hair as he poured every ounce of love and affection he could into a brief kiss. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it would have to do now. From her dazed expression, he had accomplished his goal as best he could. She hurried inside after that, promising to come visit him tomorrow, and he started for home.

“Maybe tomorrow, everyone else in Avonlea will be very busy,” he prayed into the darkness.

. . .

It turned out that everyone in Avonlea was busy the next day; unfortunately, “everyone” turned out to include Gilbert and Anne. Marilla had taken sick with one of her headaches, Bash needed help repairing a fence, Delly was fussy, Hazel was away, and Gilbert was running from place to place all day while Anne hurried to prepare a Christmas dinner for eight by herself. They saw each other the next morning only long enough give rushed apologies for cutting their day together short, and once at night when Anne dropped a simple meal at Gilbert’s kitchen table for his family and ran back to Green Gables. Gilbert was almost too exhausted during the day to think about what he would have rather done with his time, but he wasn’t nearly exhausted enough at night to avoid a few moments of self-pity.

“All I want for Christmas is for our families to have some reason to be called away to Carmody for an entire day; is that too much to ask?” He moaned into his empty room. A sudden howl of wind outside his door had him wondering if God did not appreciate that particular request.

He trudged to town the next morning on a mission to find flour, at Hazel’s request. Hazel adored Marilla’s plum puffs as much as anyone else, but the two of them now had a bit of a baking rivalry going, and Gilbert suspected that Hazel would buy out the town’s entire supply of flour as she tested out new recipes.

He caught a flash of red hair as he finished paying at the counter, and peered out the window just in time to see Anne walking along the path back to Green Gables with Diana beside her. For some reason, her hair was down, looking even more achingly soft and inviting than usual. He lifted the flour to his shoulder as quickly as he could, hoping he could catch up to them and convince Diana that she should let them have a little time to themselves.

He didn’t register the tinkling of the bell at the door as he moved to leave, until the new customer called out his name.

“Gilbert!” His voice was loud enough that every patron in the store turned. “Bud, I meant to find you after church the other day. You didn’t _really_ throw over a Charlottetown girl for the orphan, did you? I need to talk some sense into you.”

Gilbert never swore aloud, but sometimes the situation called for some internal cursing. _Fucking Billy Andrews._


	13. Fights and Fears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy pushes Gilbert over the edge, and Gilbert worries about Anne's reaction...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (In case you are wondering, IRL I don’t condone fighting, but the number of times I will have Gilbert fight Billy in a story is approximately infinity times, because I hate Billy and I think he wasn’t punched often enough on the show. If Billy shows up in one of my stories, someone is going to kick his ass. Maybe next time it will be Anne, or an Anne/Diana/Josie tag team effort…)

“Let’s talk outside, Billy,” Gilbert bit out, realizing very unhappily that Mrs. Pye and one of the Cuthberts’ closest neighbors were both watching this exchange with interest. _Just how many times do I have to throw things at this jackass before he learns to keep his mouth shut?!_

He tried to walk Billy as far away from town as he could, hoping that he could keep everyone else from overhearing, although Billy was still yammering away about ‘small-town girls’ all the while. Gilbert hardly heard a word of it, concentrating instead on the insistent voice in his head, the one telling him that he couldn’t make a scene. _It’s a miracle that Anne never found out about our last fight. I can’t let her hear about this._

The crunch of footsteps further behind drew his attention for a second, and he saw with an inward groan that Moody had followed them. He hadn't even noticed that Moody was outside the store, he was so focused on holding his anger in check.

“Have you said something to him about this?” Billy, still wearing an incredulous look on his face, directed that question to Moody.

Moody stared at Billy for a beat, before turning to Gilbert. “Everything alright?”

“I’m just asking Blythe here where he got the idea that he should go after Anne, _of all people_ –“

Gilbert's face went hard and he took a step back to try to cool his temper. “Billy, I’m going to stop you right there. I seem to recall we’ve been through this once before, and I won that fight. Is your memory really that bad?”

“I could’ve won if I had bothered to keep going,” Billy scoffed, seemingly impervious to Gilbert’s thunderous expression and Moody’s wide eyes. “I felt bad for you then. Besides, I’m trying to do you a favor. She does nothing but stir up trouble. I mean, there’s a reason no one wants her…”

“Considering all the suitors she’s had to turn down at Queens, I’d say that’s not true,” Moody replied hotly. Gilbert whipped his head from Billy to Moody. “I’m guessing I wasn’t supposed to bring that up,” Moody said under his breath.

“I guess she’s gotten a bit more…womanly,” Billy admitted with a joyless laugh. “At least tell the rest of us if she’s worth trying out when you decide you can’t stand listening to her complaining –“

Just like that, Gilbert’s resolution failed completely. He tackled Billy to the ground with such force that the air left Billy’s lungs, and by the time he took another breath Gilbert was already on top of him, delivering blow after blow. He tried to return a couple of punches, but Gilbert had him pinned and the first hits had him disoriented.

Billy could hear Gilbert’s furious shouts, but everything was happening so fast that he could understand only a few words. “…she isn’t a toy…don’t you dare, _ever_ …don’t go anywhere near her…,” Moody eventually intervened, but only halfheartedly.

“Gilbert, he’s not going to be able to see out of that eye for a long time,” Moody pointed out as he helped Gilbert back up.

“That was the idea,” Gilbert hissed, staring daggers at Billy, who was still rolling on the ground with a hand to his face.

“I don’t blame you,” Moody added quietly. “I’m just saying I think he has the point.”

“Do you?!” Gilbert nearly spat at Billy. “Do you understand my point? Unless you want me to come back here with Bash, and Jerry, and Moody, and Charlie -”

“Charlie?” Gilbert’s brow furrowed in irritated confusion at that question. _He’s got a split lip and two black eyes, and he wants to argue about who else wants to fight him?_

Gilbert turned to Moody, who still had a hand on his arm. “You think Charlie would like finding out Billy’s talking about Anne like she’s…trash for everyone to pass around?”

“Come to think of it, no he wouldn’t.”

“And Diana -”

“What does Diana have to do with anything?” Billy snickered, then winced as his hand flew back up to his swollen lip.

“Diana would take a hammer to your skull, trust me.” Billy finally rose from the ground and Gilbert stepped forward again, as menacing as he had ever been in his life. “I’ll bring Cole, too. I’m sure he’d love another shot at you.”

“All of this for that… _girl_ –“

“Billy, listen to my point right now before I tackle you again. You are going to forget that Anne ever existed and never say another word about her, or I swear to God I’ll end you. I have always loved her, and everything else is none of your damn business.”

“I can’t believe you’re serious.”

“Do you want to find out if I am?! Leave us alone from now on. I am serious.”

“What, are you really going to…marry her?” Billy's face was rapidly swelling and turning purple, but his shock was evident anyway. 

“There is no way in the world that I am discussing that with you, and you cannot talk about her like that no matter what I’m going to do. As a matter of fact, you can’t talk about any woman like that or you’ll find yourself on the ground again. We’re done here.”

Gilbert strode away as fast as he could, his breath still coming in enraged gasps. Moody followed closely behind him, casting nervous glances back at Billy, who still hadn’t moved. They skirted around the edge of town, hoping to avoid curious onlookers, but there wasn’t much they could do that would improve the situation. Gilbert felt nearly certain that they hadn’t been far enough away to drown out his shouting, and in any event Billy’s face wouldn’t be hidden from everyone in Avonlea. He realized belatedly that his hands hurt and winced in remorse when he saw his knuckles. Anne was going to kill him.

“What a disaster,” he moaned quietly.

“If it’s any consolation, I would’ve done the same, if he’d said that about Ruby,” Moody admitted.

“Our future reverend would’ve punched Billy Andrews in the face?”

“I think there is a Billy Andrews exception somewhere in Scripture,” Moody laughed.

“Well, put in a good word for me on Sunday, because I think I am in serious trouble,” Gilbert shook his head.

“I think she’ll understand,” Moody started, but Gilbert eyed him in disbelief. “Eventually.”

“Well if anyone asks, can you please just tell them that I’m not giving up Anne for anything because I love her, and that Billy Andrews is an idiot who’d better stay the hell away from her?”

“You didn’t have to ask me to say either of those things, because I already know, but yes I will.”

“Thanks.” They walked along in silence for a while before taking separate paths to their homes.

Gilbert dropped the flour in the kitchen and made a beeline for the barn to look for Bash.

“Why you look so mad?” Bash asked with a laugh when Gilbert walked in, but the laughter died immediately when he saw Gilbert’s hands. “Blythe, what happened?” He asked, voice full of concern.

Gilbert relayed the entire story and Bash gave a low whistle. “I would’ve roughed him up with you. What a thing for that…worthless fella to say about our Anne.”

Gilbert gave a slight smile to hear his brother talk about Anne so protectively, but it was quickly replaced with a grimace. “Except now I made the whole thing worse. I shouldn’t have hit him.”

“You think he’ll do anything to Anne after this? Seem like once you’ve beaten up a fella twice, he’s probably going to learn his lesson.”

“No, but it might cause gossip about Anne and if it gets back to Anne, and the Cuthberts…,” Gilbert paused and sighed, crumpling against the wall. “Oh no, Diana will find out too…”

“What does Diana have to do with anything?”

“Let’s just say that if I ever go missing, she’s the prime suspect.”

“Diana Barry? Little thing, smiles a lot?”

“Those smiles are just hiding her schemes to murder me if I upset Anne. Also, Jerry appears to have appointed himself as Anne’s older brother and he started muttering about pitchforks when I walked by him yesterday…”

“Are you sure he wasn’t just messing with you?”

“The problem is, I won’t know the answer to that question unless I get a pitchfork to the face, will I?

“You sure he’d aim for your face?”

Gilbert rolled his eyes. “Why do I tell you anything?”

“Because all my body parts are intact?”

“Focus, will you?! I was trying to keep everyone from talking about Anne and now that’s all they’re going to do!”

“You want me to give you some real advice?”

“Doesn’t it seem like I need some?!”

Bash chuckled. “Fair enough. Talk to Anne, for heaven’s sake.” He stepped forward and gave Gilbert a sympathetic pat on the back. “I don’t know how else to tell you this, but you are terrible at guessing what she’s feeling.” Gilbert opened his mouth to retort but the argument died on his lips. Bash wasn’t exactly wrong, after all. “You don’t know what anyone will say, and you don’t know what Anne will think. Tell her the truth yourself and _ask her_ how she’s feeling.”

Gilbert nodded wordlessly, trying to tamp down the fear rising in his heart. “She might be really upset.”

“You won’t be the first man to survive making a lady upset, Blythe. You might want to learn how to do it now. Something tells me this won’t be your last time, either,” Bash added, unable to hide a smile.

“I guess I should finish my chores and go to Green Gables,” Gilbert sighed. He practiced his speech to Anne for the next couple of hours, though he couldn’t seem to find an explanation that didn’t sound…bad.

Gilbert had just returned with a fresh pile of wood for the fire when he stopped dead in his tracks outside the kitchen door. Anne was inside, sitting at the kitchen table with Bash. He could only see her back, but Bash's drawn expression was not encouraging. He swallowed hard and opened the door with the enthusiasm of a prisoner heading to execution. Anne turned as soon as she heard the door, and he saw in an instant that her cheeks were flushed and her eyes rimmed red.

“Anne…” he croaked, feeling his stomach heave with nerves, “I’m so sor –“

He didn’t even finish his sentence before she launched herself into his arms and buried her face in his neck. He heard her give a shuddering sob and he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist. “Are you alright?” She asked, voice wavering and muffled by his coat. “This is all my fault!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't fret, the kisses are coming! :) I didn't feel like I could do them justice without some more work, so that'll wait until next chapter. 
> 
> Thank you to all my lovely readers and commenters! I love hearing from you!


	14. Cries and Cuddles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our lovebirds need to have a talk...and a kiss or two...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I meant to get this out far sooner, but I had no idea what to do with it! I edited this one a stupid number of times and I'm still wrestling over it. I have some stuff that I wanted to include but I think they'll have to wait, because I just can't imagine this conversation going on for much longer than it does without kisses. ;)

Gilbert stared at Bash, who was still sitting at the table, with wide, disbelieving eyes. Bash was watching Anne’s back, his expression pained. She cried soundlessly, but her distress was obvious from her trembling form. Bash jerked his head in the direction of the door to the parlor. “Go,” he mouthed.

Gilbert gave a slight nod and lowered his lips to Anne’s ear. “Come with me,” he said softly. Anne still didn’t look up, but she let Gilbert lead her out of the kitchen and into the empty parlor. They settled on the sofa, and Gilbert tried to lift Anne’s chin, but she merely shook her head and sniffled.

“Nothing is your fault, Anne-girl,” he murmured, but she still refused to meet his eyes. “Why don’t you tell me what you heard?”

“Josie came over saying that her mother had been at the store and heard Billy asking about, well, why you picked me.” Gilbert closed his eyes in frustration. _The jackass had to ask in front of everyone_. “They said some people could hear you yelling from down the lane and then Billy came back into town…saying you’ve obviously gone crazy.”

“I’m sorry you had to hear about it from someone else. I was going to come to your house to tell you about it soon. I should have come over immediately after it happened.” Anne finally looked up and took his hands.

“It’s alright – I think Josie was mostly excited that someone gave Billy a solid punch,” she said with a small laugh and a hiccup. “I don’t think you should’ve hit him just for that – he’s hardly the only person who must be wondering.”

“That isn’t why I hit him,” Gilbert admitted, “I tried to hold myself back, because I didn’t want everyone gossiping about it. I’m sorry I made it worse, _again_.”

Anne shook her head vehemently. “They’re gossiping because of _me_. I knew this would happen – they were never going to think it made any sense for you to choose me when I’m so… _me_ , and you could have your pick of beautiful, proper women, who don’t yell…who wouldn’t have made you doubt their feelings for so long! I could’ve made all of this simpler and I didn’t! Is it any wonder you almost proposed to Winifred?”

Her heart-wrenching sobs started again, and Gilbert could take it no more. He pulled her tightly into his arms and felt her hands grasping at his shirt. As she burrowed herself further into his shoulder, he finally threw all caution to the wind and pulled up her legs so that they draped across his legs, allowing her to fully settle against him as she cried. He stroked her back and pulled her closer and closer, as though he could protect her from the world, if only he could cover her with his body. All the while, he murmured into her ear.

“Anne, stop. I have the beautiful, perfect woman I want.” He could see the uncertainty in her eyes and he wanted to kick himself. He placed a hand under her chin again, and this time she looked up. “Look at me. What happened with Winifred was my mistake and only mine. It had nothing to do with anyone else being better than you and _everything_ to do with me being too scared to tell you the truth.” His voice was wavering by the time he finished. “I am so, so, _sorry_ that I ever gave you a moment’s doubt. There was never a moment where you weren’t the woman I wanted, so… _much_.”

“But I should have treated you better and realized my feelings!”

“Didn’t you say you planned to confess at the fair? You were braver than I was.” He shook his head. “When I think of how…broken I would have been if I thought you were marrying someone else…. I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed. I hate that I put you through that.”

She threw her arms fully around his neck then. “I love you,” she said simply.

He brushed a kiss across her cheek. “I should have said it exactly like that when I first came home, on Saturday, and years ago. I love you too, Anne-girl." She tightened her hold on him and he sighed in contentment. "I am happy every day of my life that you’re mine, and my mistakes getting here are my cross to bear. I won’t have you blaming yourself anymore and I’m certainly not going to let anyone else blame you or question how I feel about you.”

“They’re still going to wonder why you didn’t choose someone beautiful,” she mumbled, “or why you haven’t found a beautiful girl in Toronto.”

“You are the most beautiful woman in the world to me, and it doesn’t matter if anyone else crosses my path.” From her expression, it was obvious that Anne was struggling to believe him. “It’s hardly like I’m the only one who noticed your looks. You’re telling me all those fellows sniffing around you at school don’t think you’re beautiful?”

Anne’s head snapped up and she pulled away from his grasp slightly. “How did you find out about that?!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Gilbert countered, unable to suppress a cheeky grin.

“Because it’s irrelevant! I just tell them no – I don’t want them!”

“Is it because none of them are handsome?” Anne opened her mouth to retort, but she couldn’t exactly lie and say they weren’t. Roy Gardner was a handsome, albeit extremely obnoxious, man. 

Gilbert stared at her evenly until her eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to make a point?”

“Yes. My point is, think about it like your trees. You see lots of beautiful trees for a second, and you might admire them, right?” She nodded. “But there’s only one Snow Queen. You can pass by those other trees without a second thought, but you’ll come back to your Snow Queen every time, because to you, it is the most beautiful. And if Snow Queen disappeared, you’d be lost.”

Anne’s eyes glistened with tears again, but this time she smiled at him and kissed him softly. “I suppose I should say then that you’re my Snow Queen. There are no men in the world as handsome as you.” Gilbert bit his lip and grinned back at her, before cuddling her close again. They sat quietly for a few minutes, each gathering their thoughts. Suddenly, Anne looked up at him again.

“Were you…jealous when you heard about those men at school? I guess I didn’t…think about that,” she muttered in astonishment.

“I get jealous over you all the time, Anne-girl.”

That surprised her. “You _what_? Why on earth…”

“Well, I didn’t know if you liked some other boy better, but I’d see you being friendly and I’d wonder. Take Charlie, for instance,” he said, eyebrows raised.

“That is ridiculous.”

“I heard he walked you home.”

“I…you were jealous?”

“If wishing he would break a leg and stay away from school for a month is jealous, yes.” Anne’s hand flew to her mouth and she suppressed a giggle. “Even Jerry, a time or two – “

“Now I was never in any danger of falling in love with an annoying brother –“

“I know that _now_ , but you are friendly with him. Cole, I was probably most jealous of him. I don’t worry about it anymore, but I wondered if I’d lose you to him until the last possible moment.”

Anne sat up straight, eyes wide. “That is truly, truly not ever a risk. I can’t tell you – just trust me, you never have to worry that we will be anything other than friends. I can’t believe – I never thought…”

“Well, you two are close. It was obvious when I came back from the ship that you were close the way I wanted us to be close and…I was jealous. Then you were going to meet up with him in Charlottetown and – well, you get the idea. I got jealous every time I heard you say his name.”

“I’m sorry…I had no idea.” Her soft gaze met his and her hand caressed his cheek. “You were the only one I wanted, the entire time.” He watched as her eyes swept over their bodies, while a charged silence settled over the room.

He had been so focused on her distress that he hadn’t noticed their intimate position, until now. He had never held her like this, and he saw only now that one of his hands lay casually across her legs. Anne also glanced down at his hand and jumped, just a touch. Gilbert snatched it away with a hurried apology.

Gilbert was suddenly aware of his own beating heart and he tried to cover up the way his breath was wavering with nerves. Her eyes finally returned to his, and he realized he hadn’t been so anxious since that day at the boarding house, as he waited for her to tell him if she truly shared his feelings. He supposed it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, then, when she responded in much the same way she did back then.

She slid one hand around the back of his neck and crashed her lips to his, smiling against him as she felt his shocked gasp. Her lips were moving tentatively but deliberately, and he was reminded again of their first kisses. He had desperately wanted to stay, that day, to sink into her and show her exactly what affection and desire really meant. His response now was nearly immediate and intense. To his shock, she grabbed the hand he had removed from her body and returned it to her side. He realized then that she wasn’t wearing a corset, and he could feel the movements of muscle over bone on her ribcage. His other hand slid up into her hair, still tumbling down her back. He was so distracted by the feel of her under his hands that his lips stalled momentarily, and she pulled back, expression full of worry.

“Should I not – I don’t want you to think – I…”

He crashed her against him and cradled her face against his neck, too full of emotion to face looking at her. “Don’t you worry for another second about me today. I have you, _finally_ , and you’re mine, _finally_ , and we’re alone, _finally_ , and I couldn’t be happier if I tried.” He boldly let his hand caress her side. “Should I confess I’ve been hoping for a moment like this since we got home?”

“Should I confess I don’t really want to move, then?”

“Good,” he whispered enticingly, “because I’m not nearly done.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might continue the makeout session in the next chapter...thoughts?
> 
> Just to get it out there a bit, there is a reason why I gloss over any of Gilbert’s feelings that are more complicated than “always liked Anne, thought she didn’t like me” (to this day I really don’t know what Show was trying to tell me about his feelings, because it seemed like several theories were plausible, though I think my version is one of the more plausible ones. I do not judge those with conflicting theories 😊). It’s not that he isn’t entitled to have feelings more complicated than that, and he probably did to some extent, but they just seem irrelevant now. After everything he put Anne through (however unintentionally), I don’t really think he should put the burden of a whole big explanation of his prior inner conflict on her. He wanted her for a long time, he chose her, and she’s had enough self-doubt and pain without doing a play-by-play of one of the worst periods of her life. Similarly, I think he owes it to Anne to place blame on himself for the clusterf*ck that was S3 and gloss over absolutely any part she had in it when talking to anyone else. He gave the town an extra opening to judge her and it’s his job to make sure they can’t take it by making her out to be a second choice or the other woman.
> 
> I'm sure they would have plenty of opportunities in their relationship to work on Anne's faults - just...not right now. :)


	15. Older Brothers Are So Embarrassing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By popular request, the kids are still making out. :)
> 
> Also, Josie is really happy that someone beat up Billy.

Anne hadn’t really been sure what to expect, when Gilbert came home. So far, her happiness exceeded even the abilities of her wild imagination. Though she had her flashes of doubt, and blame, and sorrow for her former self, when she was confronted with the painful memories of last summer, they usually faded almost as quickly as they came. She supposed she had good practice at moving on, after all. At the time, the pain over Gilbert had been soothed, as it were, because she had Matthew, Marilla, Diana, Cole, Aunt Jo, and countless others, to give her comfort when she was in danger of slipping back into old habits and believing that she couldn’t be loved at all. She still had those moments of fear, that she would lose everyone she loved, but those moments were less frequent and passed more quickly with each passing year. It was far more painful to remember that she had once been in danger of losing something far more precious even than a romance – the chance to belong anywhere at all. If she had lived through that and could let the memories fade, surely this saga would also be but a fuzzy recollection, with time.

She didn’t know why she had been so upset, then, to learn that Gilbert had been in a fight. She and Diana had been baking Christmas cookies at Green Gables when Josie flew into the kitchen, without so much as a knock, to share the news.

“Billy said something to Gilbert about you,” she gasped, “and Gilbert beat him to a pulp! My mother said Billy looks like he was on the losing end of a prize fight!” Josie didn’t stop beaming, even as she popped a still-cooling cookie into her mouth.

“But what could he have possibly said that would be worth fighting over?!” Anne exclaimed.

“Billy says stupid things every day of his life. It’s a wonder he isn’t beaten up more, really,” Diana replied with a careless shrug.

“I’m certainly not complaining,” Josie laughed.

“But it must be all over town by now!” Anne wailed.

“Oh I’m sure that’s true – my mother said she’s never seen the shops so packed before and everyone saw Billy come running back to town, talking about how you must have cast a spell on him because he said one little thing about you and Gilbert went crazy. It must be the Christmas shopping,” Josie mused with a shrug.

“Not. Helping,” Diana ground out.

“This is all my fault!” Anne exclaimed. “Gilbert never had these problems until I turned up in his life!”

“I don’t think Gilbert wants to return to the boring old life he had before, Anne,” Diana assured her, but Anne had already buried her head in her hands.

“My only regret is that I can’t make his face look like that,” Josie added. “Imagine how satisfying it must be to beat him in a fight…”

“Josie,” Diana turned to her, “I assume you want to be on your way and tell Tillie and Ruby all about this. We certainly wouldn’t want you to lose an opportunity to humiliate Billy all over town,” she suggested smoothly.

“Right. I do need to hurry because my mother expects me home soon. We’ll see you at the party – tell Gilbert we want to hear what happened!” Josie hurried out the door just as quickly as she arrived.

Diana wrapped an arm around Anne. “I’m sure you do know that you should ignore Josie almost always.”

“But still…I’m the kind of person who causes these sorts of things to happen. I’m sure he wouldn’t have gotten into any fights over Winifred –“

“I am going to stop you right there, Anne Shirley Cuthbert. Frankly, I know more debutantes than you and you might be surprised at the fights that happen. You really don’t know what she was like.” Anne’s expression was still dubious, so Diana gently pulled Anne from her seat at the table and nearly strong-armed her into her coat. “Gilbert had a choice and he picked you. Why don’t you go ask him about it?”

“You’re not coming?”

“I should go home soon anyway, and I think this time Gilbert can handle things without me,” Diana said with chuckle. “I’ll finish putting away these cookies myself. Go to Gilbert.”

Anne nodded and hurried out the door, having no idea what was about to happen.

. . .

Now, as she sat in a position that would cause Rachel Lynde to faint dead away on the ingrain carpet, Gilbert’s hand tangled in her hair and coaxing her forward for another kiss, she realized that she hadn’t prepared for this possibility at all. Gilbert Blythe was a far more passionate individual than she had ever expected, and she felt a thrilled shudder weave its way down her spine.

She had hoped for romance, and friendship, and hand-holding, and kisses, of course, when Gilbert came back home. His letters had been so loving and sweet that she hardly expected him to be _less_ affectionate in person than he was in writing. Still, it was a different feeling, to be… _wanted_ , and to want in turn. She understood the idea in theory, and had whispered and giggled with the girls about their suitors and the butterflies they felt in moments of romance, but it was one thing to be told in theory that wanting is a powerful feeling, and another to understand it herself.

 _I think I understand now, why Mrs. Lynde used to say that kisses led to trouble_ , she thought with a secret smile, just as Gilbert’s lips covered hers again. _The problem is, I think I want the trouble. Sorry, Mrs. Lynde._ Perhaps it was safer to kiss a man when you weren’t madly in love. Propriety simply couldn’t compete with the thrill of watching Gilbert’s eyes turn almost molten with desire, just before he pulled her back to him. Though the entire experience was new, this was Gilbert, after all. She trusted him, and she trusted them together, so she happily gave into the moment and experienced it with him.

They lost any sense of time or place, focused only on each other. Even compared to the feel of his lips, it was almost more intoxicating to feel his hands tracing over her neck, thumb making gentle circles over her skin and occasionally catching strands of hair between his fingers. It felt like he was memorizing the feel of her, appreciating every inch of skin and silky strand. She returned the gesture, tentatively tracing a finger around the outside of his ear. She had no idea that it would have any effect at all, but to her considerable shock, Gilbert let out an almost inhuman growl against her mouth and pulled her impossibly closer. Since it had worked so well once, Anne decided to try her luck again, and this time she felt him slant his mouth more firmly over hers, gently parting her lips. It was her turn to let out an unexpected noise when she felt his tongue tentatively touch hers.

“Miss Stacy,” Bash’s voice called out with a theatrical boom, “how nice of you to visit us today! Won’t you come into the parlor?” Gilbert and Anne broke apart in an instant and stared at each other in panic.

. . .

Muriel nearly jumped a foot as Bash shouted at her. “Are you having difficulties hearing today?” She asked in confusion.

Bash flashed a conspiratorial smile and whispered, “Blythe’s in the parlor with Anne. I’m giving them a warning.”

Muriel paused just as she was about to step inside the door to muffle a bark of laughter. “Is it really that bad?”

“You were their teacher – what do you think?”

“Oh dear…”

“Yeah, I passed by the door once to check on them. It’s exactly what you’re thinking.”

“Has anyone ever followed courtship rules, really?” She said with a grin, and Bash nodded in agreement. Muriel held up her hand and Bash paused while they both collected themselves and tried to paint blank looks on their faces.

“Very warm weather for December, isn’t it?” Muriel remarked at a higher volume as they neared the door, quite out of the blue.

“Indeed, it is making the house very comfortable,” Bash replied evenly as he opened the door to the parlor to find the lovebirds standing 10 feet apart, looking everywhere but at each other. Anne and Gilbert might have succeeded at faking propriety, if Gilbert’s rebellious hair were not sticking out from his head in every direction.

 _God help us all_ , Bash thought. _If only Mary could have seen these two lovesick fools._

“How nice to see you, Miss Stacy,” Gilbert said, with admirably feigned nonchalance.

“It is nice to see you both. It was a shame we only had a moment on Sunday. You will both have to tell me more about school!”

For a moment Gilbert stared blankly, as though he had temporarily forgotten that anything existed in his life aside from Anne, and he was trying to recall what he was expected to say. Anne rescued him and began chattering about school newspapers and exams with alarming enthusiasm, even for Anne. Muriel was deeply grateful that years of teaching had prepared her to witness utter nonsense with a straight face. No cheating student had ever behaved as guiltily as these two.

“Well I am glad to see you both doing well. Courting an academic rival surely does encourage additional study,” Muriel added in her best schoolmistress tone, though she couldn’t help but exchange an amused look with Bash.

The bashful pair nodded and glanced at each other. “I am…terribly sorry,” Anne blurted out, “but I did leave the house suddenly and I really should go home and help Marilla.”

“I’ll walk you home,” Gilbert said.

“No, it’s really okay, you have chores,” Anne insisted.

He glanced sideways and took another step toward her. “I just want to make sure you get home safely, please? Lot of fights happening out there,” he added with a grin. Muriel turned to Bash, eyes wide as saucers, but he merely rolled his eyes.

“Blythe, let me get something for you before you go,” Bash said, heading for the door.

Gilbert followed him into the hall. “What is it?”

“Nothing, but you need to go straighten up that crow’s nest you call a head before you see the Cuthberts. And don’t let Anne do that to you again on the way back,” he added, taking a moment to appreciate Gilbert’s horrified reaction before he strode back into the parlor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be a shameless plug (if so, sorry!) but I did once write a fic that was basically just people freaking out when they catch Anne and Gilbert making out, if you enjoy that sort of thing. :) Rachel Lynde has Opinions.
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/21325171/chapters/50786944
> 
> (Sorry I can't figure out how to make it a hyperlink. Technical genius, I am not.


	16. The Birds and the Bees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of Anne/Gilbert cuteness with the Cuthberts, and Bash decides it's time to give Gilbert The Talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I'm sure you're all working to deal with our new reality, as am I, so I hope this finds you well, healthy, and safe. I hope this chapter brings some happiness to your day!

“I really think this is unnecessary,” Anne said again once they were out the door.

“Well, I’d also like to apologize to Mr. and Miss Cuthbert for causing trouble.”

“I doubt you need to worry about that. They know how Billy can be.”

“Well still, I want to. Besides,” he added with a sigh, “I am a little worried about Billy.” Anne turned to him in surprise. “Not for myself, but please, promise me you’ll avoid him. If anything happened to you…”

Anne threw her arms around his waist. “Since you’re worried about me, I guess I’ll listen this one time,” she said indulgently. “But you need to stay away from him too. You’re the one who actually fought him!”

“I’m not worried about me. I’ve beaten him in a fight twice and he knows if he tries anything again, I’m coming back with reinforcements.”

“Excuse me?!”

“I might’ve said that next time it would be me, and Bash, Cole, Jerry, Moody…I added Charlie and Diana…I suppose it would be rude at that point not to let you come,” he mused.

“What?! You’re not forming a gang to defend my honor!”

“I wouldn’t have to try, sweetheart. They all love you too, and they would do it in a heartbeat. I bet Ruby would join too,” he added with a laugh.

“I can just picture her running at him with a broomstick and missing when she tries to hit him, can’t you?”

“Screaming like a banshee, yes.”

. . .

Jerry found them before they’d even entered the house.

“Wow, you really did get into a fight,” he said with a hint of admiration as he glanced at Gilbert’s hands.

“Who told you?!” Anne exclaimed.

“I heard Mrs. Lynde telling Miss Cuthbert when I went in for tea.”

Anne and Gilbert exchanged nervous glances. “What did she say?” Gilbert asked.

“I don’t know. I tried to leave fast when I heard Mrs. Lynde. She was having a fit, but I figured she’s always like that,” Jerry replied with a shrug. “What did the guy do?”

“It was my fault,” Anne said, and Jerry’s face fell slightly when he saw Anne’s drawn expression.

Gilbert grabbed her hand, impervious to their audience. “I believe we’ve been through this. You didn’t do anything, and Billy Andrews is an idiot.” He glanced back at Jerry. “Billy has hassled Anne for years and he said something stupid and I…just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Jerry assessed them both quietly for a moment. “Tell me if you need backup next time.”

Anne rolled her eyes. “Not you too,” she groaned, catching Gilbert’s triumphant smile out of the corner of his eye.

Jerry doubled over with laughter. “Anne, if someone insulted me in front of you, you would throw them to the ground. Don’t bother pretending just because Gilbert is here.”

“I don’t like it when you’re right, Jerry,” she finally spat out, but her heart wasn’t in it and she was grinning too. They all stood together for a moment, shoulders shaking with quiet mirth, exchanging knowing smiles.

“Well,” Gilbert said, biting back a final chuckle, “I think we should go inside. I expect Miss Cuthbert would like an explanation.”

. . .

Marilla fussed over Gilbert while Matthew sat silently at the kitchen table, watching the scene closely.

“I’m sorry Miss Cuthbert…I really will try not to do it again, but…I couldn’t think of any other way to keep Billy from saying things he shouldn’t.” He had considered refusing when Marilla insisted on bandaging his right hand but thought better of it. If it made Marilla happy, he was not in any position to argue.

“Well no matter what he said I hope you’d find ways to keep yourself out of trouble in the future,” Marilla clucked. “As though we need you being as hot-headed as Anne.”

“I haven’t hit anyone for a very long time!” Anne exclaimed.

“You mean I was the last? What an accomplishment for me,” Gilbert said with a fond glance.

Marilla continued to mutter as she made supper, until Matthew surprised everyone by interjecting. “We don’t know what Billy said, Marilla.”

Gilbert knew Matthew was observing him with careful attention, even though he was mostly avoiding direct eye contact. “With all due respect, Mr. Cuthbert, I’d rather not say. It wasn’t true and it was incredibly disrespectful and I’d rather that no one else even have to think about it.”

Matthew nodded thoughtfully. “I trust you did what you thought was right. Marilla, I think we should leave him alone about it.” He finally looked straight at Gilbert, and a look of understanding flowed between them. Anne watched the exchange with a hint of confusion and finally turned to Marilla, who also bore a questioning expression.

“Men,” Anne mouthed to her silently, and Marilla whirled back to the stove to avoid betraying her amusement.

They all moved on to happier topics, and Anne and Gilbert helped with supper (as their own quiet penance for causing a stir). Gilbert lingered as long as he could, but finally he had run out of excuses to stay.

“I don’t like leaving again,” he murmured as they stood at the door, running his thumb over the back of Anne’s hand. “We have so little time as it is and we had to waste it on nosy neighbors and emergencies and fights…”

“It’s just until tomorrow,” she assured him. “Then you’ll be here all day for Christmas. You’ll have to help me light the tree.”

“I would hope that this time, I could coax you into a kiss after we blow out the candles?”

“Just one? You aren’t exactly a ‘just one kiss’ type” she laughed, worrying her lip between her teeth in a way that had Gilbert sucking in his breath with want, though she didn’t know it.

“It didn’t seem like you minded,” he whispered, his voice dangerously seductive.

“I’m starting to think you’re exactly the kind of man that Mrs. Lynde warned us about.”

“That might be the nicest thing that anyone has ever said about me.”

. . .

He didn’t arrive back home until long after supper, and he found Bash, Hazel, and Elijah all in the sitting room.

“Blythe, why don’t you and I go talk?” Bash said lightly, leading him upstairs.

Gilbert watched him climb the stairs with a furrowed brow. “Is something the matter?” He asked as Bash closed the bedroom door.

“It seems like you’re in need of some manly advice.”

“Don’t you think you’ve given me enough opinions lately?”

“I can still hear things, even if the door to the parlor is closed, so after today I am thinking that you are in need of some more advice.” Bash wondered if anything would ever be so enjoyable as watching Gilbert go scarlet with embarrassment.

“We weren’t doing anything –“

“Blythe, it’s really like you think I was born yesterday. How many times I have to tell you that your face gives away exactly what you’re thinking? I’m just saying, be careful. And don’t do that at Green Gables.”

“Contrary to your belief, I am not entirely stupid.”

“I’m not talking about being stupid, I’m talking about being in love. I do know what I’m talking about, you know. You might remember that Delly arrived less than a year after Mary and I were married –“

“Bash, I want to go medical school. We really don’t have to talk about how babies are made, do we?”

“We’re not, we’re talking about how they are made _accidentally_ by people in love.”

“What exactly can I say to end this conversation?”

“Tell me you remember that you have years left before you’re done with school and you’re not going to be ruled by your –“

“OKAY! I promise to take this seriously if you promise not to finish that sentence.” Bash gave a satisfied nod. “I’m serious, you don’t have to worry about anything like that. I think you’re not giving Anne enough credit, _frankly_ …”

“I’m not insulting Anne, I’m insulting you –“

“And _anyway_ …I wouldn’t risk our future like that. Look at the mess I’ve made already. You think I’d risk having to drop out, having everyone gossip about her? I’d never do that to her,” he said, looking almost hurt at the insinuation.

“Fair enough. But still…be very careful before you go sneaking off alone, will you? I understand what you’re saying, but I’ve also been in love. I’m telling you that it won’t always be easy.”

“I know that’s true,” Gilbert muttered under his breath, causing Bash to turn back with wide eyes.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing! Just that you’re right – don’t you like being right?”

“I’m going to try again. No playmates for Delly or I’m going to kill you.”

“Don’t you think you should keep me alive in that case – are you going to create a fatherless child?” Gilbert shot back with a mischievous grin.

“You are making me extremely grateful that Delly was a girl. You are…”

“Having a bit of fun at your expense. I promise – no playmates for Delly.”

“And I won’t hear more noises like that from the parlor?”

“Oh no, I’m not promising that.”

“Blythe!”

“What? Stop listening. Problem solved.” Bash shot him a warning look the likes of which he’d never seen before, and Gilbert finally let out a defeated sigh. “Give me a break, will you? After everything we’ve been through…I promise I really am listening but…I love her.”

“Fine – a small break. But you ought to be careful of her reputation.”

Gilbert nodded thoughtfully. “I know. You don’t have to worry as much as you think about…that.” Bash’s sideways glance suggested he didn’t believe Gilbert for a second. “I’m serious,” he sighed. “Especially about babies. I’ll probably be a nervous wreck, someday.”

“Um, I don’t think we need to talk about this now but I can try to explain things I guess…”

Gilbert rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean that. I meant…actually having children.”

“You don’t want them?”

“I don’t have a mother, do I?”

“That’s what you’re worried about?”

“Shouldn’t I be? My father…he never wanted to talk about it much but now that I have Anne…” he fiddled with the quilt on his bed as he felt his stomach clench. “I know I’ll be scared to death. I can’t imagine how my father must have felt.”

Bash sat down in front of him and waited until Gilbert looked up at him. “I’m not going to tell you that nothing bad can ever happen.”

“You’re right – I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up –“

“I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, I wouldn’t give up a day I had with Mary, or the chance to have Delly in my life, or any of it, even if I knew how it would end up. There aren’t any guarantees, but there’s no point in running around scared your whole life, either. Anne doesn’t seem like the type to live her life that way.” Gilbert nodded his agreement, though his face was still troubled. “And I keep saying this but I’ll say it anyway, _talk to Anne_ if it’s bothering you. Although, maybe not now,” he added as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“Yeah, it’s possible that ‘death in childbirth’ is not an ideal topic for a newly courting couple,” Gilbert deadpanned.

“Which leads me back to my point – be careful about what you're doing and where you're doing it, Blythe, and if you are in over your head…talk to me? Please?”

“Since you asked nicely…” Gilbert agreed with exaggerated reluctance. “If I agree to talk to you will you agree not to say anything about any of this in front of Anne?”

“Deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should say - I have a couple more chapter ideas but if you have requests I'm open to them! Picnics? Letters? Fights? Smut? What are we thinking here?


	17. The World's Most Uncomfortable Fishing Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some fishing happens, some kissing happens, some uncomfortable advice happens. A lot happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How on earth did this chapter get so long?!?! If this fic were a show, this would be the “montage” episode to move us on to the next phase – Anne and Gilbert as an established couple. Sorry, I really wrestled with it because I wanted to be less montage-y but then eventually I also wanted you to have it, so…
> 
> Thanks so much for everyone's great suggestions in last chapter's comments! The chapters that follow this one are all basically request fulfillment. 😊 So much kissing will happen, and cuteness, and cuddling, I promise.
> 
> There is one more short scene here of people giving Gilbert a hard time about Winifred, but then I’m done. In case anyone wonders what I’m on about, I have Feelings about Anne having a strong group of friends who love her and will defend her to the death, and if that means they accost her boyfriend in the middle of a holiday party to make sure that he is done with whatever made him a bit dumb for a while, well, so be it. Anne went 13 years without anyone to love her and now I want All The Love to a ridiculous extent. So, here we are. I hope you enjoy!

The rest of Christmas was nearly perfect, Gilbert thought, except for a few awkward questions. Their friends were an absolute nightmare when they all gathered for a party at Josie’s house, but he supposed it was only fair. After all, he’d dared to hide his feelings for years and then muddy everything before his departure, only to turn up months later practically engaged to Anne. That they all wanted to know every detail about how he felt and how much he loved her was his penance, he supposed. They pounced on him the second that Anne stepped away to finish the dessert she’d prepared for the occasion.

“Gilbert, we hear that you were smitten with Anne from the very first day?!” Tillie exclaimed.

“Did you really think he asked her all those questions about the homework because he _didn’t_ know the answers?” Diana said with a long-suffering sigh.

“You did ask her a lot of stupid questions…” Tillie mused.

Josie sat up straighter as realization dawned. “And at the dance practice…it was like you two were in your own world. You messed up the line!”

“My techniques could use some work, what can I say?” Gilbert tried to keep his tone light, but his dread was growing.

“And then you came to the bonfire, but you only talked to Anne and then you disappeared!” Ruby added, as they each put together pieces of the puzzle in their minds.

Not wishing to relive the dumbest few days of his life, Gilbert searched desperately for a way out. Diana, it seemed, was uninterested in rescuing him.

“Let’s put it this way, alright? If Anne was present, ever, in the last three years, you can assume that I had feelings for her and was probably trying to find some way to talk to her.”

“And yet there you were at the fair, with what’s her name, and you let us all think you were engaged,” Josie said, and there was no mistaking the frostiness in her voice. Gilbert glanced at her in surprise, while the rest of the girls exchanged nervous glances. Josie’s eyes never left his, and she clearly expected an answer.

“Yes, even then. I’m not proud of it. I truly didn’t think it would matter to Anne, and that courtship was…not like this one, not even close. It wasn’t love. It was a mistake, and I should have been paying more attention to Anne’s feelings.”

“Diana said you broke her heart.”

“I know, and I hate that I did. It won’t ever happen again.”

“So, there aren’t any more rich Charlottetown girls who might turn your head?”

“Josie!” Ruby exclaimed in shock.

“What? He had one – it’s a fair question.”

“Listen, I love Anne, only Anne, and always only Anne. I understand why you’re suspicious right now but if you want to give me grief about what happened, please, tell me instead of saying something to Anne? This wasn’t her fault and she’s suffered enough.”

“You do seem to be doing a good enough job, now,” Josie acknowledged. Coming from Josie, that was high praise, indeed.

“I promise, I plan to do better than ‘good enough’,” Gilbert assured them, and Tillie and Ruby were back to beaming at him. Josie was still staring at him hard enough that he had the uncomfortable feeling of being examined, until finally her expression softened.

“How many times did you kiss her when you confessed, anyway?” Josie asked.

Moody finally ambled over to their little group and unexpectedly rescued Gilbert just in time. “The ladies have you cornered, do they?”

“Moody, I really think it’s time for some banjo music,” Gilbert suggested, breathing a sigh of relief.

Diana caught him later by the punch table.

“I’d say you acquitted yourself admirably back there,” she said as she held out her glass for a refill.

“You didn’t put them up to that, did you?”

“No, I’ve yelled at you enough. I’m satisfied now, and you know Anne is happy. But, they’re her friends too. They worry.”

“Even Josie Pye…”

Diana shrugged. “Anne is special, after all.” Gilbert agreed.

. . .

Most of the time, his fight with Billy seemed to divert attention from any other topics that he might have wanted to avoid. Evidently, the fact that otherwise mild-mannered Gilbert Blythe turned out to have beaten up Billy Andrews over Anne Shirley Cuthbert, not once, but twice, was far more interesting to most of the good people of Avonlea than anything else.

“You must have more strength than I imagined,” Mr. Barry remarked at church the following Sunday, with a hint of admiration.

“Don’t you think you’d find the strength if someone insulted your family?” Gilbert muttered. He truly was a bit embarrassed about the entire thing, but really, did Billy Andrews understand any message that wasn’t delivered with a blow to the head?

“That I would, son,” Mr. Barry laughed.

Gilbert resolved to be a bit more of a gentleman at Green Gables, if only because he thought he’d caused enough trouble for one holiday. No need to make the Cuthberts question their decision to agree to this courtship. He needed to stay in their good graces for many, many years before he could marry Anne, so it wouldn’t do to start off on the wrong foot (any more than he already had).

He did dare to kiss Anne in front of the Christmas tree, after everyone tactfully left them alone in the parlor to blow out the candles. “I finally get to do this,” he murmured as he drew her close. She could see the flicker of candles in his eyes, and she smiled at the memory of that earlier Christmas, standing just where they were now. How times had changed.

“Thank goodness you remembered,” she whispered just as his mouth caressed hers.

He truly would’ve gotten lost in the embrace, as he placed a firm hand on her back and pressed against her. She rewarded him by stroking a finger along his jaw, and he recalled with a slight gasp that she had done the same thing that day in Charlottetown and it had nearly driven him over the edge. Only a loud clatter from the other room reminded him that they were still at Green Gables, and his current thoughts certainly would not comfort Anne’s parents overmuch. It turned out that Bash had dropped a pewter bowl, and Gilbert strongly suspected that the entire incident was not exactly accidental.

. . .

Returning to Toronto after two glorious weeks together was even more painful that it had been in September. She’d gifted him with a perfect photograph of her, in his favorite blue velvet dress, and he spent most of the ride there cradling it in his lap. Much as he loved it, he was regretful that photographs could not show color. Black-and-white simply couldn’t capture Anne’s full, vibrant loveliness (though he doubted any photograph really could). He kept the memory of her soft blue eyes and shimmering copper hair in his mind, to sustain him until he could see her again.

After another semester of feverish work and only a few days together in Charlottetown (when Gilbert had a school break and Anne did not), finally, summer arrived. Anne had completed her coursework in one year (and was, naturally, at the top of the class) and had won the Avery scholarship. She would be continuing her studies at Redmond college in the fall, as the Avery paid her full tuition and room and board to complete her B.A.

“We’ve never had a girl from Avonlea with a B.A., you know,” Rachel told her when the news was announced. It wasn’t clear from her tone if this was a compliment or not.

“There’s a first time for everything, Mrs. Lynde,” Anne replied evenly, feeling immensely proud of herself for responding without her usual temper. _Perhaps I really have learned something at Queen’s!_

Gilbert was practically jumping out of his skin to see Anne by the time he arrived home, and she didn’t disappoint. This time, wisdom prevailed, and she collected him from the station alone. 

They stopped along the way home to take a “walk” through the White Way of Delight, though very few actual steps were taken. They knew they were expected at home, though, and they would have no good excuse for an abandoned carriage if anyone else were to come along the road, so sadly their “pleasant stroll” was painfully brief.

Anne had grand plans for their first summer together. She spent weeks sending him letters spinning ideas and imagining each glorious day until Gilbert, too, was lost in images - of warm July afternoons spent strawberry picking with Anne, watching her lips grow red with juice, of seaside strolls where they might go barefoot and run through sand and surf, of afternoons with Delly, full of laughter, as his heart constricted in anticipation of a future family together. Those images kept him going as rainy March in Toronto turned into windy April, and he busy schedule allowed for nothing but study and precious daydreams.

There was one small hurdle to overcome, though, before their summer spent unendingly in each other’s company could begin. That first afternoon at Green Gables, Matthew suggested a fishing trip for the next morning. It was the perfect time of year to fish in the inlet over by the Bell farm, after all.

Anne was horrified that her perfect summer was already interrupted, and Gilbert had hardly been home for three hours. She nearly dragged Marilla into the kitchen. “Marilla, Gilbert just returned from an arduous journey! Why is Matthew doing this?”

“I think Matthew has slowly come to the realization that Gilbert really is going to be a part of your life from now on, and he’d like to get to know him better. Be easy on him, dear girl. Watching all the changes in your life over the past year has been an adjustment for him.”

To make matters worse, Bash and Jerry both overheard this invitation and wheedled invitations for themselves. The foursome set out early the next morning, as Anne watched anxiously from the window. It seemed from the very start that Jerry and Bash were determined to make good use of the day by swapping stories about Gilbert.

“I never heard someone talk about one girl so much. I was gonna bring him home myself even if he didn’t decide to return, just so he’d stop,” Bash said with a shake of his head. “I think he spent a week on that letter to her.” Bash leaned forward. “Matthew, did Anne like his letter at least?”

“Uh, I can’t say as she said anything to me, but Marilla said she was awful pleased to be getting a letter from so far away.”

Gilbert craned his head over the edge of the boat as though searching for his next catch, hoping to hide the grin that was spreading over his face.

“Pleased about that, are you Blythe?” Bash called out.

“I did try to write a good letter,” Gilbert admitted.

“You know, years ago I saw them together in Charlottetown and I thought he was going to spend all afternoon staring at her. I should’ve told Matthew then to keep an eye on him,” Jerry shook his head dramatically.

“You two are scaring away the fish,” Gilbert said through gritted teeth.

“We aren’t really here to catch fish, are we, Blythe?” Bash asked innocently.

“I am,” Matthew muttered.

“I thought we were all here to make sure Gilbert is a good beau for Anne.” Jerry played off his comment as a joke, but Gilbert had a sneaking suspicion that he was more serious than he let on. Gilbert gave him a grudging smile. He might find Jerry's comments obnoxious, but he couldn't deny that he felt much better leaving Anne behind when he could see ample evidence, each and every day, that she remained in the company of so many people who loved her dearly.

“I promise that from what I see, Gilbert’s gonna do everything he can to make her happy.” Bash assured him.

“Matthew can ask me whatever he likes, whenever he likes, but otherwise, maybe we should have a small chance of catching something?”

Matthew started, as though struggling to come up with questions on cue. “Oh, er, school going well?”

“Yes, sir. My grades have been good and I’m hoping to qualify for a fellowship in a year or two. It would be a good learning opportunity and might help me earn some scholarship money.”

Matthew nodded thoughtfully. “Anne’s real proud of you.”

“I’m really proud of her too.”

“I worry about her a bit, going all the way in Halifax for college.”

“I worry about her all the time, but I know it’ll be worse when she’s there. I wouldn’t dare tell her, though,” Gilbert added, and Matthew gave a wide-eyed nod of agreement.

“Seems like you two have a lot in common,” Bash observed with a knowing grin.

. . .

“How was the trip?” Anne asked when they returned, opening the door so that they could carry in the day's catch.

“Great!” Jerry said brightly, while Bash nodded a bit too enthusiastically next to him. Gilbert and Matthew trailed behind them, looking decidedly less enthusiastic. Everyone gathered that afternoon to eat an enormous fish dinner, with Bash and Jerry still chattering away while Gilbert and Matthew stared silently at the both of them.

“Perhaps we should move to Toronto someday,” Gilbert said quietly as he helped Anne with the dishes later. “We can just buy fish.”

“You want to move to Toronto just so that you don’t have to go fishing?” she laughed.

“I want to move to Toronto so that lot,” he said, jerking his head at Bash and Jerry, “live 1,000 miles away from us. The fish is just a bonus.”

Anne caught Jerry in the hallway just as he was about to start afternoon chores. “Whatever you did, I am going to kill you.”

“You act like it was my fault.”

“I am going to find that girl you like from Carmody and tell her every embarrassing thing I know about you. I live with you. I can think of some good examples.”

“You act like I don’t know any embarrassing things about you.”

“Jerry, the advantage of doing humiliating things in public all the time is that it is very hard to find some secret that is more humiliating than the things I do all the time, anyway.”

“I promise, all that happened is that Bash and I agree Gilbert’s been after you for a long time, and Matthew’s happy he’s going good in school.”

“Must you talk about ancient history?”

“You want me to talk about how I caught you in the barn yesterday?”

“Back to my original plan. I’m going to skip embarrassment and move straight to murder, Jerry.”

. . .

The interminable day finally came to a close with Matthew and Gilbert alone in the sitting room in companionable silence, staring into their cups. “You know, Mr. Cuthbert,” Gilbert started, eyes never leaving his tea, “the boat is a little cramped for four people, and we are both strong rowers.”

Matthew glanced up at him with a hopeful smile. “That’s true.”

“So, maybe next time, we would be more…comfortable, if it was just the two of us.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

. . .

After that disastrous excursion, Gilbert had considered simply never speaking to his brother again. When he finally returned that night after a little time spent with Anne, though, his desire to ease his troubled mind outweighed his annoyance. So, he sought out Bash just after Delly had gone to sleep.

“Um…,” he started, closing the door behind him, “I did say I would talk to you if I was in over my head…”

Bash’s glance slid from the closed door to Gilbert’s nervous face and he felt panic rising in his chest. “Oh God, what did you do??”

“You’re not going to kill me or anything!” Bash let out a long sigh of relief at Gilbert’s assurance. “Why do you always say it like that?”

Bash shook his head and prepared for what was sure to be an entertaining evening, now that he was sure none of his worst fears had come to pass. “Well, whatever happened, was it Anne’s fault?”

“No,” he admitted quietly.

“Need I say more?”

“I’m trying to figure out how to hide it from Anne…”

“It?”

“Please don’t make me say it.”

“If you’re not old enough to say it you’re not old enough to do it so either spit it out or spend your days with Anne playing checkers.”

“I don’t want her to notice that I’m…obviously very interested, sometimes, when we kiss.” Bash trained his eyes very carefully on the floor and tried add up last month’s accounts in his head to avoid grinning. It was a perfectly fair question and he’d certainly been there, but he had to feel for Gilbert just then. It must be mortifying to ask.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you don’t want to stop doing whatever is…causing this problem.”

Bash was slightly alarmed again as he watched Gilbert’s reaction, because the boy’s face was more purple than red. Was there something worse than mortified? Mortified to death?

“Is it even possible to stop this problem entirely? I think she’d have to stop…existing.”

Bash smiled knowingly. “No actually, it isn’t. You make a good point there.”

Gilbert groaned and flopped on the bed. “Is this why men get married so fast? To avoid humiliation?”

Now Bash couldn’t help but snicker, just a bit. “In a way…yes. Someday it really won’t matter, Blythe. You’ll both be more comfortable, and this kind of thing…it will just be a normal part of life.”

“But for now – I don’t want to scare her! Or make her think I’m…expecting something I’m not and I don’t even know how I would bring it up and…” Gilbert shoved a pillow over his face, as though smothering himself would solve his dilemma.

“Blythe, I am going to say something that probably won’t make you feel better.”

Gilbert sat up, but now he was slumped over with his chin resting on the pillow in his lap. “You might as well say it, since the rest of this conversation isn’t doing anything to help.”

“Alright, here we go. Unless you’ve been standing far away from her every time you kiss her, she might already know.”

“ _WHAT_?” Now Gilbert buried his face back in the pillow and when he didn’t raise his head again for several minutes, Bash began to worry that he really would smother himself. He remained eternally gratefully that Delly was still a baby, and he wouldn’t have to handle another courtship again for years.

 _Oh no…except Elijah_. If ever there was a young man who needed the Talk, it might be Elijah. _Mary, what have I gotten myself into?_

“Listen, was she acting strange today?”

“No…”

“Then if she has noticed, it didn’t bother her enough to treat you different, did it?”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Unless you’re planning on not going anywhere near her, and _I do not believe you are capable of doing that_ , it’s probably going to happen. I know you don’t wanna make her uncomfortable but, I think you could find ways to be honest with her without making her think you’re expecting something she doesn’t want. She might even appreciate talking about it if she isn’t sure about what you expect.”

“I just don’t know how I would even start…”

“You say you wanna be with her for the rest of your life.” Gilbert’s vehement nod left Bash feeling a funny kind of pain as he watched. He knew how that certainty felt and oh, how he missed it. How much easier these moments would be if he had Mary there to offer some guidance, too. Still, he would do his best, as long as the boy was willing to listen. “Well…being with someone for the rest of your life usually involves some…uncomfortable conversations.”

“So you think I should just tell her…that no matter what she’s noticed, I’m not expecting anything.”

“Yes, something like that. You don’t have to go into too much detail, but she probably won’t run screaming. Maybe don’t say it…in the middle of things, though. And not at Green Gables. If you are listening to anything I am saying, at Green Gables you are a saint, got it? Otherwise I’m not covering for you when we’re at dinner or fishing with Matthew.”

“No, you’re not allowed to go fishing with Matthew anymore.”

“Why not? It was fun.”

“Because somehow you’ll end up saying ‘arousal’ in the middle of the morning and I’ll end up drowned in the fishing pond.”

“Fortunately for you, Matthew does not strike me as a violent man.”

“I am not very interested in finding out if he makes exceptions for the person who, well…”

“Wants to sneak into his daughter’s bedroom someday?”

“What?! I wasn’t going to say that!”

“Okay fine, we can both sit here and pretend the thought has never crossed your mind if that makes you feel better.”

“Why do I tell you anything?”

“Because you have no idea what you’re doing and your only other option is to ask your friends, who probably know even less than you. I think I liked it better when you didn’t ask me about things.”

“Nevermind, ignore what I said. I tried not asking you about things and that was a disaster. I’m asking you about everything from now on…”

“Oh heaven help me…”

“What, you think I should try to figure it all out for myself?”

“No, no, heavens no, that would be bad. But I have to tell you, some things you are just gonna figure out for yourself in the moment, Blythe. If you know her at all, it’ll turn out alright. And if all else fails and you don’t know how to tell her the truth about something, get drunk, turn up in a laundry basket, and the rest will sort itself out.”

Gilbert stared at him for a moment, nostrils flaring. “If I had absolutely anyone else to ask, I would fire you from this job as my advisor.”

“It worked for me, what can I say?”

. . .

When Gilbert returned home from Anne’s the next day, he found a mysterious gift sitting on his dresser. It was a bottle of rum, imported from Trinidad – Bash’s favorite. A note was tied around the neck of the bottle. _If all else fails._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So of course there are many amazing and wonderful people on this site, and you all have given me so much inspiration. For this particular chapter, though, I must give special thanks to Chreechree, because she had a scene where Josie gives Gilbert a hard time and I thought - she's blunt and it's a nice redemption arc for her. And so, the scene at the Christmas party was born. Similarly, jacksparrow589 had the idea that Bash should tell Gilbert to get drunk and turn up in a laundry basket if he couldn't think of anything else, and so I went with it because I love it (they both knew about my inspiration before I published this chapter btw). So thank you both - you're awesome!
> 
> Seriously, the next chapter is just Anne and Gilbert being their dumb selves and being in love and getting advice because they still need a lot of it! It is also a lot more focused. I'll try to get it out sometime this week if I can spare the time.
> 
> We now have some friends and loved ones being tested for Covid-19, so that's a bit stressful. I'm over here with my fic, some homemade cupcakes, and a lot of Clorox wipes, trying to stay sane. As always, I hope all of you are well and healthy, and give a shout in comments if you have fic requests or just need other humans to help you get through the day!


	18. Let's Get Drunk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne and Gilbert make some questionable decisions, and hilarity (plus awkward advice and cuddling) ensues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't mean to get this out quite so fast but...it was amusing to me so it happened faster than I anticipated! I'm happy to report that all loved ones are in good health at this point and we do seem to be treading water with life, at least! I hope all of you are well and healthy, but of course let me know if you need to vent (or need particular Shirbert scenes to improve your life)!

It started, as so many disasters do, so innocently.

The first few days of summer flew by, taken up with visits from friends, a flurry of early summer chores on the farm, and a few stolen moments for Anne and Gilbert together. They were both longing for an opportunity to enjoy uninterrupted time alone, and they were both eagerly anticipating a planned visit to the shore the following Saturday with Ruby and Moody. That the couples had agreed to split up once they reached their destination, well, that didn’t seem necessary to mention to anyone else.

Then one afternoon, Anne found Gilbert at home, unexpectedly alone. Hazel and Elijah had traveled to Charlottetown to visit friends, taking Delly with them. Bash had disappeared as well, though he’d pointedly ignored Gilbert’s attempts to discover where he was going. Gilbert was attempting to make himself useful (since Bash complained daily that college was turning him soft), by fixing some wobbly kitchen chairs. Unfortunately, some of their tools had gone missing, so by the time Anne arrived, she found her beloved crawling along the floor, searching every nook and cranny.

“What are you doing?” she giggled, since the sight was most undignified (she tried not to notice that the view from behind was also quite nice, but she wasn’t completely unobservant, after all).

“Delly has been hiding things she finds all over the house, so I’m trying to find a hammer but it’s possible she moved it somewhere.”

“You let a baby run off with a _hammer_ , Gilbert Blythe?” Anne exclaimed, hands on her hips.

“Not me personally!” He certainly wasn’t taking the blame for that one, since Anne surely would never let him hear the end of it. “I don’t know what happened to it. I’m just saying, things disappear around here these days, and it’s possible the hammer is absolutely anywhere by now.”

“Where haven’t you checked?”

“I think I’ve exhausted all the options down here. The way things have been going lately, I might just find it under a bed.”

Anne nodded shortly. “Alright, let me help you.”

They trudged up the stairs, eyes on every corner and crevice. Anne searched first through a sparse-looking room that must have been Hazel’s, but considering the lack of accoutrements, it wasn’t difficult to confirm that no hammer was lurking in a shadow somewhere. She moved to the next room, at first down on her hands and knees to search under the wardrobe and the dresser. When she finally lifted her head, she realized with a start where she was. His Sunday suit was on a hook next to the door, and a line of textbooks occupied a shelf on the wall. _Gilbert’s room_.

She’d never been in there before, and the only time he had ever seen her room, she hadn’t been home. _It looks like it would be his, doesn’t it?_ She thought with a smile. Her gaze passed over the dresser, where a suspiciously familiar looking shell caught her eye.

“Anne? Find anything?” His footsteps drew closer until he was standing in the door.

“No,” she faltered, “nothing in here or the…other room, over there.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t moved from the doorway, and he was scanning the room frantically, as though it had just occurred to him that there might be a few things that he didn’t want her to see.

“Your room is nice,” she observed tentatively. “Very you.”

“Thanks. It’s not as nice as your room.”

“That’s because you don’t have any flower crowns.”

Gilbert grinned at that. “I was hoping my sweetheart would make some for me.”

Anne smiled adoringly back until her face suddenly took on the wide-eyed quality that he now uncomfortably remembered from their pre-courtship days. He really, really didn’t like seeing that face. She turned away from him, looking in every corner of the room as though she suddenly found striped curtains, well-worn chairs, and abandoned workboots fascinating. She found everything fascinating, it seemed, but the bed, since she was going out of her way not to look at it.

“You have rum?!” she suddenly exclaimed. “I didn’t think you drank very much.”

“I don’t – it was a gift from Bash. A bit of a joke, since I drank for the first time with him.” He supposed he should feel bad for telling Anne a bald-faced lie, but he would jump out the window before telling her the real story. It seemed that self-preservation required a lie, just this once.

“So, you’ve tried it?”

“Not this one – I had rum in Trinidad.”

“I’ve never tried proper Caribbean rum. Is it any good?”

“Um…hard to say. I suppose it takes some getting used to.”

“You got to try so many new things when you were away…,” she mused. Now, her wide-eyed fear was replaced with an Anne face that he found far more terrifying – the scheming Anne face. “We should try a little, and you can tell me what it was like to drink in the bright sunshine of Trinidad!”

The smart thing to do would have been to say no, or to suggest that they go downstairs, or to pour just a little into a glass. But sometimes, when it came to Anne Shirley Cuthbert, Gilbert was not particularly smart. So instead of doing any of those things, he uncorked the top, handed her the bottle, and watched at she took a swig that would put every stoker on the ship to shame. It wouldn’t do to take a delicate sip after that, now would it?

They started talking about Trinidad, then college, and then Anne rifled through his textbooks. She quickly found her letters secretly stashed among the pages (where could read them when he simply couldn’t bear to study a moment longer without her words to sustain him). After she discovered a dozen letters in rapid succession, Gilbert hid his embarrassment with swigs two and three from the bottle, and from there every disaster that followed was surely inevitable.

In the future, when he remembered how the next part unfolded, he couldn’t remember the exact words that were used. All he remembered is that Anne said something about a Dominion Women’s Enfranchisement Association, and he said something about how hard that was to say, and then she said something about a women’s suffrage convention, and he said something about his internship, and the entire debacle ended with Bash and Muriel standing at the door, taking in the scene while Anne raged about insufficiently supportive life partners and Gilbert tried desperately to understand where he had gone wrong.

. . .

Bash had almost no practice with giving a stupid young man a serious verbal beating, but he had excellent practice receiving them, so he felt quite qualified to start in on Gilbert the second that Muriel had ushered away a tearful, red-faced Anne.

“What the hell were you thinking? The rum was a joke and was definitely not given to you so that you could get Anne drunk _in your bedroom_? Have you studied too much and it’s turned your brain to mush?!”

It was amazing how sheer terror had the effect of sobering a person up, even though now Gilbert’s head ached and he held on to his forehead regretfully. “That wasn’t the idea! And anyway, as you can plainly see, she is now mad at me because she’s convinced that I am insufficiently supportive of women’s suffrage…I think…so I can assure you that I am currently in the opposite situation of whatever you’re worried about! If she kisses me again this year, I’ll be lucky,” he grumbled.

“You two got drunk in your room and argued about women’s suffrage?”

“Er, yes, was that not clear from her yelling?”

“And that was it?”

“Yes…”

“I truly am not sure whether I’m more worried about you now than I was before. Only you would end up in this situation, Blythe.”

“I am aware of that fact.”

“It’s a miracle that she’s courting you at all.”

“Did you not hear me? I don’t know what she is doing right now but it doesn’t look like courting!” It might have been the rum turning Gilbert’s cheeks red and his eyes glassy, but Bash doubted it.

“Blythe, calm down. This isn’t the first time that Anne has been upset with you and it won’t be the last. I’m sure it will smooth over.”

“It just…it’s our first big fight, since we’ve been…together. It’s different now, you know?” By now, Gilbert was sniffling in earnest, and Bash quietly handed him a handkerchief.

“I remember the first time Mary and I fought after the wedding. I was terrified, to be honest. If I’d made her unhappy after only a few weeks of marriage, I wondered if there was any hope for us.”

“I hope there’s a ‘but’ in there.”

“ _But_ , Mary was smarter than me. She found me hiding in the barn after a while and told me she loved me and wanted to talk it through. I’d probably still be in that barn, but like I said, she was smarter than me.”

“I assume the point is that I should be more like Mary and less like you?”

“That is almost always the right answer, yes.”

Gilbert craned his neck to listen down the stairs. “Where is Anne? Did she go home?”

“Blythe, do you think I am stupid?! Muriel is with her, and she’s staying here until she sobers up.”

“Oh, _Muriel_ is with her, good to know. I notice you were with your good friend _Muriel_ , again.”

“You were a bit too foolish today to get away with your usual nonsense, so I suggest you shut it.” Gilbert looked sufficiently guilty, so Bash gave a satisfied nod and stood to leave. “I am going to get you something to sober you up, and you are going to wait here until I tell you it’s safe to talk to Anne.”

Gilbert nodded thoughtfully. “Probably wise.”

. . .

Anne hadn’t uttered a coherent word in 15 minutes. Muriel was left to wonder if she’d actually drunk all that rum by herself, considering her current state.

“But how can he not think it is _critically important_ – does he care nothing for me?”

“Anne, I think we should start by eating this food that Sebastian brought out and having some water – you aren’t solving any problem with your stomach full of nothing but rum.”

“Ugh, yes, this was most unwise. How could I forget that night at the ruins? The last time I drank Gilbert was there and it was a disaster too!”

“Let me try to understand – Gilbert is in favor of all Canadian women having the vote in all elections, with no property or widowhood restrictions. So, what is the problem?”

“Oh sure, he says he is, but he isn’t passionate about it! Not like me! He said – I don’t really remember what he said. He said something, and I thought – he doesn’t care about this if it will interfere with his precious schoolwork!”

Muriel closed her eyes and smiled patiently.

“Anne, very few people are as passionate as you about…anything, really. That doesn’t mean there is something wrong with them or you.”

“But how can he not care about it passionately when it would affect…me? _I can’t vote_! Does he think that I will be content to just be…an Avonlea housewife who worries only about pies?”

“Anne, I would like you to listen to me. You have gone ‘round the bend.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you can’t assume that Gilbert doesn’t care about you or assume something about him unless you know for sure. I truly, truly do not think there is a chance in this world that Gilbert expects you to be anyone other than who you are, and he wouldn’t want you to be someone else. I am sure he thinks it is a grave injustice that women can’t vote, and you can ask him yourself later. But you must remember, he is still not the same as you. He might not be as passionate about something as you are, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t care or won’t help you with something that you care about passionately.”

“How can that be?”

“It’s impossible to be equally passionate about everything. Are you as passionate about medicine as he is? Even though what he’s doing is important?”

“No,” she admitted.

“And you can’t be equally passionate about everything you care about either, can you? Every moment you are worrying about suffrage, you’re not helping Ka’kwet. Is it because you don’t care about her?”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

“I think sometimes you go looking for evidence that people don’t care about you, even Gilbert, rather than seeing what is right in front of you. Try having a little faith in him before you get angry. And maybe…less rum next time.”

“Ugh, the rum again. My stomach…,” she clutched her middle, face full of regret. “I was just nervous, and we were up there and I thought I had to be sure about…everything…if I put myself in _that_ situation but what if everything isn’t perfect? And then the rum was there but I was still nervous…and now I’ve made it into a disaster…”

“Anne, you’re babbling again.” Muriel desperately wished she could avoid the next question, but Anne’s confused speech had alarm bells ringing in her head. “If I may ask…what situation did you think you were in? Was Gilbert…forcing something you didn’t want?” Muriel held her breath as she waited for a response.

“No!” Anne fairly shouted.

Muriel didn’t hide her sigh of relief. She would never have expected it of Gilbert, but she had to be sure.

“It wasn’t like that,” Anne insisted. “We were looking for a hammer and we went up there for a minute to search, but then I realized where we were and it just…hit me. That it would happen someday that we would be alone together like that and I started thinking about _things_ and the rest of our lives and…rum suddenly seemed like a good idea.”

“Okay, the teacher in me would like to explain two problems with this line of thinking.”

“Just two? That’s actually better than I expected.”

Muriel laughed. “First of all, things are never perfect. I would never tell you that you must keep courting Gilbert if you feel that things aren’t right between you, but they can be right without being perfect.”

Anne nodded, slowly, deep in thought.

“Second, am I to understand, then, that you were really out of sorts because you were in his room?”

Anne nodded again, still very slowly, her embarrassment evident. “Please don’t tell anyone! If Marilla found out or if anyone around town –“

“I can assure you that no one will ever hear a word from me. Anything you tell me about this is confidential.”

Anne breathed a sigh of relief. “Nothing happened, I promise.”

“I believe you. But, I assume you’ve kissed?” Muriel asked with a knowing quirk to her brow.

“I mean…”

“I am not trying to embarrass you. You don’t need to tell me anything. I’m just wondering, based on what you just said, if anyone has talked to you about what to expect, about…marital intimacy? Given what I remember about that dance practice, anything your friends have said doesn’t count.”

“Not…in so many words. I know some things but, when it’s described in a book it’s all so…clinical. I suppose a medical textbook could describe kissing as just ‘two sets of lips touching’ but that isn’t how it feels, is it? And medical textbooks don’t say anything about butterflies in your stomach or worrying about what other people expect or anything that seems so…real, when you’re standing alone in a bedroom with a boy.”

“As you know, I have been married, so…why don’t we talk about it a little bit? I know marriage is a long way off, but you might feel less nervous if you have a chance to ask some questions. I promise, when we are done, I will erase the conversation from my memory, and we can pretend it never happened.”

“But…is it even normal? To think about it? I feel like I’m not even supposed to ask,” Anne mumbled.

Muriel patted her hand reassuringly. “Truly, it is normal. I think it’s a bit unfair to pretend that the thought never crosses a woman’s mind until her wedding day. It isn’t wrong of you to have questions, even now. You love Gilbert very much, don’t you?”

“I can’t even believe how much,” she admitted softly.

“There is nothing wrong with you, Anne. If it will make you feel better to know, just ask.”

Muriel truly should have known what she was getting herself into, but Anne Shirley Cuthbert would remain, until the end of her days, her most surprising pupil. One question led to another, and then to another, until Muriel began to deeply regret that there was no textbook available for her to shove into Anne’s hands rather than continue the discussion. She had promised to answer her questions, though, so she soldiered on.

“But then it would seem that there are any number of ways to satiate desire without getting pregnant, given what you’ve just described about how orgasm works…,” Anne mused.

“Alright, well, that wasn’t exactly the point of that explanation, it was really just so that you know how…conception…occurs…,” Muriel stammered. _No one at teacher’s college ever taught me how to avoid dying on the spot when I hear a girl who used to wear pigtails say ‘orgasm’ like she just asked me to pass the salt. That was a serious oversight._

Ever-curious Anne continued until she had exhausted every question. Much as she loved Gilbert, and much as her reaction to his attentions intrigued her, she also confessed her worries about the judgment of others. She knew that some in Avonlea would still be quick to blame the orphan in their midst for leading their Gilbert astray, were the worst to happen. Even more importantly, she didn’t want Matthew and Marilla to worry about her. Muriel was painfully aware of how the acute sense of longing for a lover often came into serious conflict with societal expectation, and she tried to soothe Anne’s heart as best she could.

“The most important thing is that you should never, ever, do something you don’t want to do. I don’t think Gilbert would want that either but if he does, then he doesn’t deserve you.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Anne said softly.

“Then things will happen in the right time. It might help you feel less nervous, if you remember that there’s no hurry. Even after you’re married, don’t put too much pressure on yourself. And I think you can talk to Gilbert, a little, if and when you’re ready to talk.”

“You’re quite good at this subject, Miss Stacy. Perhaps you should add it to the curriculum,” Anne chuckled.

“I think I prefer not being run out of town, thank you,” Muriel said with a laugh of her own. “But now that you’re old enough to ask me…these questions, I think you’re old enough to call me Muriel.”

“I think this might take some getting used to.”

“Growing up usually does.”

. . .

Anne remained in the hayloft for so long, clearing the last of the rum from her head and sorting through her jumbled thoughts, that she fell asleep and awoke to find the barn growing alarmingly dark. She could hear Gilbert’s voice calling softly for her below. Her heart twisted when she poked her head over the side and saw him below, face full of worry.

“I brought you some peppermint iced tea. It does a pretty good job with that…sawdust feeling. I can say from personal experience.”

Anne gulped it down greedily. Rum really did not age on the tongue very well. Gilbert was watching her closely as her face contorted with regret.

She sucked in a deep breath and began her well-practiced speech. “I feel very confident in my assessment that this particular fight was…my fault.”

“I didn’t mean to make you think I didn’t care…”

“I know – I think, nerves plus rum made me overreact. I’m sorry, truly. I am very passionate about many things, but it doesn’t mean you need to be…quite so passionate. I am given to understand that very few people are as passionate as I am.”

Gilbert bit his lip to avoid smiling.

“WHAT?” Anne demanded when she saw his amusement.

“Please don’t make me respond to that.”

They both collapsed into laughter, and Gilbert seized the opportunity to wrap his arms around her. “I only meant that I couldn’t participate in something that would interfere with my internship, not that I wouldn’t ever want to do anything to help.”

Anne nodded against his shoulder. “I know. I should’ve given you a chance to explain.”

“I think I said it badly too, so for that, I’m sorry. But to be honest, I don’t entirely remember how I said it.”

“Maybe rum isn’t for us.”

“Yes, it might be best for our relationship if we do not try to discuss critical issues of the day while drunk.” He pulled back slightly to watch her face. “But, nerves? Was everything else okay?”

“We were in your room and I realized probably no one else was home and…I got nervous.”

“Anne, nothing was going to happen.”

“I know, it wasn’t that.”

“I should’ve said we should go back downstairs right away.”

“No, again, you didn’t do anything wrong. I just let my imagination run away with me.”

Anne could sense the shift in Gilbert’s demeanor even before she saw it, and her heart began to pound as it had when they were upstairs. Except now, there was no rum, and she’d already admitted the truth. She could feel the tension in his arms that she sometimes felt when they kissed, usually right around the time he started making noises in the back of his throat that she wasn’t sure he even noticed.

“As long as you didn’t think so because of something…about me. Or what I did,” Gilbert ventured carefully.

“No – no,” Anne said with a confused shake of her head.

“Then I guess it’s only fair to admit that…I was nervous too. For the same reason. I’m nervous around you quite a lot.”

“Why though? You know how much I love you,” Anne insisted, drawing her hands up behind his neck and stepping closer to him.

“You know how much I love you and you were still nervous. Can I make you less nervous?”

“I guess I didn’t know how to admit to you that I’d even ever thought about it. It always seems like women aren’t supposed to admit to thinking about…anything to do with…intimacy. We’re just supposed to get married and have a baby nine months later and not give a single thought to anything in between.” She’d always thought the notion unjust, but after her conversation with Miss Stacy, it seemed particularly ridiculous.

“I know we’re not engaged yet because we didn’t want to rush things –“

“And I am not expecting it!”

“Well you should, someday,” he added with a shy smile, “but you know it’ll always be you. So…in that case…why would I judge you? I wouldn’t judge you anyway, but it isn’t such a strange subject, I guess, in that case.” Anne finally held his gaze just then and gave a slight nod of agreement. “Perhaps then…you’re in the same place I am. I don’t expect anything to happen now but…we both know what happens between married couples. It’s hard not to think about what it’ll be like, sometimes.”

“Gilbert Blythe, am I not the only one who daydreams?”

 _If only it were limited to daydreams_ , he thought ruefully. He took a deep breath and decided to risk it. There was a laundry basket in the corner if all else failed. “The truth is, when we kiss…I can’t help but…want you. Forget that – it happens plenty of other times too. But it isn’t that I expect things to go too far right now. You’re just so pretty and wonderful and I…enjoy being close to you. Quite a lot.” Now his eyes were trained on the hay-strewn floor. “I thought maybe you’d noticed and that’s why you were nervous.”

“Why would I have noticed?”

“It can be pretty obvious, for men, when that happens.”

Anne’s mind flashed to the rushed but thorough portion of Miss Stacy’s speech where she described the…physical aspects of the act, and her jaw dropped for just a second before she recovered. She saw in an instant that Gilbert was embarrassed, and she rushed to reassure him.

“I didn’t – no, I didn’t…I wasn’t thinking about…although now that you mention I did wonder that one time – nevermind you don’t need to know what I wondered.” She took a deep breath and tried again, since Gilbert’s face was growing increasingly troubled. “In all the times that we’ve kissed or hugged or touched in any way, I’ve never thought badly of you. If I’ve ever thought you were going to cause me trouble, it’s because sometimes you have a _scandalous_ look in your eye,” she teased.

“Oh great, now even my eyes are causing trouble.”

“Well they are such handsome eyes, so you can’t really help it.”

“So…you aren’t bothered?”

“If I understand correctly, isn’t a reaction…normal? Women have them too.”

She hadn’t run screaming yet, so he decided to be bold. “Women in general…or any particular women…”

“You are fishing for compliments, aren’t you?” she asked in delighted shock, tightening her arms around his neck so that his face drew closer to her. “Why don’t you try kissing me,” she whispered against his lips, “and I’ll tell you if I enjoy it.”

. . .

Both of them were nursing slight headaches but were no worse for the wear by the time that Anne returned home. Bash was watching Gilbert with a bemused look on his face when he returned to the house.

“It took you 45 minutes to apologize to Anne?”

Gilbert’s sly grin was unmistakable. “Not exactly.”

Bash knew he should probably keep scolding the foolish boy, but he looked so pleased with himself that Bash didn’t bother. “Did you stand in a laundry basket?”

“It turned out I didn’t need it.”


	19. Green Eyed Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, even the perfect suitor has a bad day...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It should become obvious pretty quickly, but this is not fun poly disaster Roy. This Roy is an ass and Anne doesn't like him. There is no danger that he will become a regular fixture in this story. 
> 
> Carry on! I hope you're all having a safe and healthy week! Thanks as always for reading and commenting! I love hearing from you!

By August, Gilbert felt certain that there was really no such thing as “enough” time with Anne. It seemed it would be his fate to suffer the unending ache of longing every time he left her, for years on end, until it was over. She put up a brave face all the while, but she could hardly hide her anguish as she accompanied him to the station on the day he was to return to Toronto.

“You’ll be going in two days yourself, Anne, to a wide new world of adventure.”

“I’m a complicated woman – I can be excited and devastated at the same time,” she declared with a toss of her head.

They dared to stand scandalously close, fingers intertwined, until the train arrived, and they could not put off their separation any longer. He watched her face as the train pulled away, much as he did every time he had to leave her.

Christmas wasn’t nearly long enough either, though it was decidedly less dramatic than their last Christmas together. Billy Andrews had finally learned his lesson and decided to simply treat Anne and Gilbert as if they did not exist, which suited them just fine. Avonlea, meanwhile, continued its comings and goings, courtships and marriages, births and deaths. The surprise of Anne Shirley Cuthbert and Gilbert Blythe turning up one Sunday as the most stunningly affectionate couple Avonlea had ever seen soon faded, to be replaced with new surprises and scandals. They worked hard to avoid being named in any of those scandals themselves (mostly by spending their time alone in the safe and secluded confines of the Blythe/LaCroix farm, away from both gossips and Marilla’s discerning eye). It was fortunate that their academic accomplishments continued and served to drown out most other complaints their neighbors might have. Avonlea was happy to claim the winners in their midst, after all.

They endured another spring apart, and then, sadly, most of a summer as well. Gilbert gained a spot in U of T’s much-coveted internship for pre-med students, and Anne eagerly encouraged him to take it. Matthew and Marilla could not afford a trip to Toronto that year, and in any event, Anne knew they would frown on a visit until she and Gilbert were at least properly engaged. Anne didn’t wish to upset them, and she certainly didn’t wish to stop Gilbert from pursuing his dreams. Still, the internship would prevent them from seeing each other for at least seven agonizing months. She assured him that she would be busy with Redmond’s school newspaper and tutoring in the spring, and the summer would be spent as happily as she could possibly manage without him (her brooding and pouting at the thought of even more time apart, she did not mention).

They did as much as any two people could do to maintain their love across the vast distance between them, but letters and packages could only do so much. They both longed for more, and for this year, at least, they would get precious little. It would be peak harvest time when he returned at the very end of July, and there would be hardly time for anything else – not for exciting trips to the shore with Delly, where they could help her dip her little toes into the water and let her smother her face with Grandma Hazel’s now-famous strawberry jam. Not for fishing trips with Matthew, blessedly free of annoying brothers of any kind. And most unfortunately, not for romantic days spent together.

. . .

It happened that Gilbert’s return coincided with the night of Aunt Jo’s summer soiree, always scheduled just before her well-heeled neighbors were set to depart for a month at their summer homes. He would have preferred not to be here at all, but Anne had described the night with breathless excitement, and he’d even received a gentle suggestion from Diana (if any of Diana’s suggestions could be considered merely gentle) that currying Aunt Jo’s favor would surely redound to his benefit. A wealthy and influential benefactress could never hurt, Diana reasoned, particularly one who had the ear of Matthew and Marilla. He had already missed the previous soiree when he’d taken sick for a week the previous summer, but it was unlikely that Aunt Jo would accept any more excuses. She was irritated already that Diana’s parents had dragged her to Europe for the summer, perhaps hoping that one more attempt to show her the wonders of Paris would sway her from her current path. Aunt Jo, for one, had truly no idea why anyone would complain about having a professional concert pianist for a daughter, but then she never did entirely understand her nephew and his wife.

By the time Gilbert arrived at the house, he was exhausted and surely bedraggled. He felt a moment of regret that he hadn’t spent more time on his appearance, having only thrown his belongings onto the bed at his lodgings, changed into a slightly less wrinkled suit, and hurried to Anne as fast as his legs would carry him. He hadn’t wanted to wait another moment to see her, but he was acutely aware that the other guests were exceedingly well-dressed, with nary a wrinkle or a hair out of place. Anne was nowhere to be found when he stepped into the sumptuous parlor, but Cole gave him a friendly wave. If he was being honest, he liked Cole, but he didn’t know how he felt about him. He chided himself anytime an uncharitable thought about Cole entered his mind, unbidden, which happened to be every time Anne mentioned him.

 _She has never once said or done anything to make you worry, you dolt_. _You have no place to say anything_. Most of their old insecurities had long since faded away, and at least in his presence, Anne no longer seemed to doubt her place in his heart. In the same way, he could hardly doubt his place in hers. Anne didn’t have the capacity for cruel deception or artifice. Her love was whole-hearted and sincere, and it was clear in abundance.

He stepped over to join Cole, pasting a smile on his face and reminding himself again that he had no real cause for his jealousy. It was irrational; he knew it was irrational. If only that knowledge stopped him from gritting his teeth, just a little, whenever Anne mentioned a letter from him, or an outing with him, or a painting from him, and on, and on. On this day, he was trying not to notice that Cole’s suit was expensive and perfectly pressed.

Cole was joined by another young man, who towered over both of them. When the fellow leaned forward to speak, his abundant dark hair fell artfully over his brow. Ordinarily, Gilbert wouldn’t have noticed, except that the young man made an elaborate show of brushing his hair from his eyes constantly, to the obvious enjoyment of a group of young ladies nearby. Who knew it was possible to be so insufferable without ever speaking a word?

“It’s nice to see you, Gilbert,” Cole greeted him happily. “I hope your trip was good?”

“No problems and I made it on time. That’s about all I can hope for on that trip,” Gilbert replied with a laugh. They weren’t close, but Cole was a genuinely kind person, and Gilbert was trying his very best not to let his less-than-charitable feelings show.

“Good to hear. Have you met Roy?” Cole asked.

Both young men eyed each other for a moment and shook their heads. “No, I haven’t had the pleasure,” Gilbert said, hoping years of practice with the likes of Rachel Lynde and Mrs. Andrews had made him a more tactful liar.

“Gilbert Blythe…Roy Gardner…,” Cole said, gesturing to them both in turn. “Roy just finished Queen’s in the spring and will begin studies at Redmond in the fall. Gilbert is a former classmate of mine from Avonlea.”

“Nice to meet you,” Roy said, though he barely looked at Gilbert. “Did you decide not to pursue Queen’s after you left school? More pressing work in Avonlea?” Roy kept his tone light, but the judgment in his voice was not very well-concealed.

“I am attending the University of Toronto,” Gilbert retorted flatly. “It will serve me better for a career in medicine.”

A look of mild admiration flitted across Roy’s features, before his usual expression of boredom returned. “A noble profession, to be sure. I debated whether university would be a benefit to me, rather than learning my family’s business first-hand, but it does seem that additional education lends a certain…gravitas.”

Gilbert really didn’t have anything useful to say in response, but Roy’s attention had been distracted, anyway. Gilbert turned his head to see just what was so interesting, just in time to see a swish of filmy purple skirts and the sheen of alluring auburn hair. Roy was temporarily forgotten as he watched Anne descend the stairs before them, and he stepped away from their little group without a word. He hadn’t seen Anne in months, so he would have been entranced under any circumstances. Today, though, it was so much more than that. Some brilliant soul (whether it was Anne or someone else, Gilbert wasn’t sure) had selected a dress for her in the latest daring fashion. Instead of surrounding her throat with swaths of fabric and ribbon, the top of the dress was cut lower, to reveal a teasing hint of her clavicle and several inviting inches of creamy shoulder. He couldn’t seem to stop staring at the pale patches of skin he’d never seen before and wondering just how much she’d sigh with contentment if he kissed each and every freckle he found there.

“She really must stop becoming more tempting every time I see her,” Roy declared eagerly next to him.

Gilbert’s stunned reverie was interrupted in an instant, and he couldn’t help but throw an unamused glare in Roy’s direction.

Cole cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Perhaps I should have mentioned,” he muttered, “that Gilbert is Anne Shirley Cuthbert’s beau.”

“Oh…you’re _that_ Gilbert.” Roy gave a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “And I was so hoping that she’d invented you just to throw me off her scent.”

“Are we hunting?” Gilbert shot back.

“Yes,” Roy replied simply.

Anne unintentionally interrupted their spat when she arrived at the foot of the stairs and turned immediately to Gilbert. He watched her give a small start when she began to lean forward to embrace him, before remembering their audience and pulling back. Gilbert felt his heart constrict as she looked at him, and he regretted bitterly that he could do nothing but grasp her hand and brush a kiss over her gloved knuckles.

“I missed you,” she breathed. She had greeted him that way after every long separation for the last two years, and Gilbert thrilled to hear it again.

“You know how much I missed you,” he said, eyes fixed on her. She was stunning; he could stand all night and stare at the way her gown hugged to her body, the way the color illuminated her skin, the way her carefully pinned hair made her neck look so long and inviting. If given the choice, he probably would have done just that.

“I say, Anne, you are a sight this evening,” Roy marveled, shattering their tender moment. “Redmond certainly agrees with you.”

Anne eyed him with unconcealed irritation. “A quality education agrees with everyone, Roy. I wasn’t aware that you were in town.”

“Just a quick stop on my way to my family’s summer home. You would have seen me in the fall, when I arrive in Halifax. I assume you’ve heard that I will be joining you at Redmond.”

“Yes.”

“It will be nice to see a friendly face there.”

“There are several Queens students in attendance, so you should not be without companions.” Anne considered putting Roy in his place immediately, since they were most certainly not friends, but held back just a little. This was Aunt Jo’s party after all, and Anne was determined to play the perfect guest, of only for Aunt Jo’s sake. This was as polite as Anne could bring herself to be, however, under the circumstances. She turned to Gilbert, who had been watching this exchange with an ominous look in his eyes. “I believe the dancing is about to start. Shall we?”

. . .

They managed to stay away from Roy for most of the night, though eventually Aunt Jo encouraged Anne to dance a few sets with other guests, to be polite. A few of her partners were friends of Aunt Jo, followed by Roy (much to her dismay), and then another old classmate from Queens.

Roy sauntered over to Gilbert after his set with Anne.

“She’s become a more impressive dancer over the last year, it seems. She must be practicing with someone while you’re dissecting frogs or whatever it is pre-med students do.”

Gilbert stared at him silently for a moment, temporarily stunned by Roy’s rudeness, before he recovered and said, “She lives with four other women. They practice with each other.” Anne occasionally complained in her letters that their parlor furniture was frequently shoved into a corner, because Stella loved to dance.

 _She scratched the floor moving the chaise!_ Anne reported in horror last February. _We tried to wax it as best we could but one day Miss Patty is going to move that rug and we are all in for it…._

“Yes, and I’m sure she receives no invitations to dance when you’re not around. Or do you think she’s sitting at home every night, wasting away her youth and beauty?”

“I know she isn’t sitting at home every night – I wouldn’t want – more to the point, why are you telling me any of this? Do you think you’re going to make me jealous? You know Anne and I are courting – I don’t care about some dance.”

“Yes, it seems quite obvious that you don’t care.” Gilbert eyed him in confusion, so Roy let out an exaggerated sigh and continued. “You haven’t proposed yet, have you? You’d think if you cared that much, you wouldn’t leave her unattached like that. You give everyone else ideas.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I seem to recall the gossip was that you nearly married someone else. How serious can you be if you were so quick with some other lady but you’re leaving Anne to rot while you flit about Toronto doing God only knows what?” Roy made this observation casually, not even looking at Gilbert. He was too busy hunting down a servant to bring another drink.

By now, Gilbert could hear his own heartbeat pounding in his head as he struggled not to overreact. “Anne knows my intentions. I don’t owe you any explanation.”

“That may be, but I’m just telling you how it looks to other people. Wolves smell blood, you know, and a suitor who won’t commit and lives halfway across the country? That’s a challenge just begging to be won.”

“Choosing a life partner isn’t like winning a prize, Gardner.”

“Isn’t it? I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to know you don’t want to bother to win her.”

“That isn’t what I said!”

“Where have you been all summer, then? I seem to recall you’ve just arrived from Toronto.”

“Trying to give her a decent future.”

“And yet here she sits in the present, all alone, while plenty of men would love to woo her right now.” Roy chuckled. “My sources tell me that she’s as popular at Redmond as she was at Queen’s. Apparently spirited intelligence and bright red hair are much admired in certain circles.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“So you won’t be surprised when I steal her away.”

“It’s not going to happen, Gardner,” he replied hotly.

Anne and her dancing partner returned just then, still recovering their breath.

“I know Jane Austen makes dancing sound romantic, but I’m exhausted!” The exertion had left her skin slightly flushed and her eyes glowing, both to maximum effect. Ordinarily, Gilbert would have noticed nothing else, but now he noticed that both Roy and the other fellow (…George, maybe?), were obviously admiring the attractive picture before them.

Roy noticed Gilbert’s dawning realization and smirked. “Yes, George is in that circle, too.”

He could feel his temper getting the better of him, so he did the only thing he could – he escaped. After making some pathetic excuse to leave, he rushed away from the stifling parlor into a secluded corner of the garden (well, another secluded corned – the first was already occupied with a very busy pair of lovers). It was there that Cole found him, sucking in furious breaths and pressing the palms of his hands to his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I left this one on a down note and a bit of a cliffhanger (otherwise the chapter was going to be soooo long). I promise, there will be no stupid fights and I'll solve everything in the next chapter and there will be sweetness and fluff. Gilbert's just in his own head a bit at the moment, as happens to a lot of people on occasion. I also promise the next chapter is coming in a day or two. Sound good? :D


	20. Perfectly freckled, red-headed dryad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cole is pretty good at this advice thing, and Gilbert still thinks Anne is very, very pretty in that dress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently you all are lovely, generous readers, and you are fine with angst. :D Thanks very much for the encouragement! As promised, this chapter has lots of fluff to balance it out. We may return to the angst because it does lend something to the story, but I'll balance it out as best I can. 
> 
> We're all still living in a tough world right now, and I hope you're taking care of yourselves. I hope I can bring a bit of fun (maybe even a bit of sexiness?) to your life at this time, and please stay safe!

“Most people at Josephine Barry’s parties do not hide in dark corners alone,” Cole observed lightly as he leaned against the brick wall.

“It’s hardly appropriate for me to pull Anne into a dark corner,” Gilbert countered, raising his head to his new companion.

“You couldn’t do that anyway, though really no one around here would bat an eye. Anne’s disappeared, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“Where is she?!” Gilbert exclaimed in alarm.

“In her room. She’s upset because of you.”

“Me?”

Cole shrugged and threw him an exasperated look. “You’ve barely been home for two hours and you’re acting strangely. Even I can see it.”

Gilbert heaved a sigh. “Oh, no.”

“Yes, she found me, and she was ready to cry because she wore that dress just for you and you didn’t even say anything about it. She was so excited about that dress when she bought it.”

“She told you all that?” The question came out a bit more aggressively than he had intended, but it seemed that everything was irritating him tonight.

“What is your problem?” Cole’s surprise was evident. “She couldn’t _find_ you, remember? You’re hiding out here. It took me ten minutes to find you.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry. Ignore me – I’m being an ass.” Gilbert buried his face in his hands again.

“I’m not going to disagree with you.” Cole stepped closer to Gilbert and raised his eyebrows in curiosity. “You want to tell me what the problem is or just take your chances with Anne?”

Gilbert let out another frustrated sigh. “Roy Gardner thinks he’s going to steal Anne away from me and he won’t shut up about it.”

Cole gave a sympathetic grimace. “Ugh, Aunt Jo felt obligated to invite him because she knows his mother from some charitable society or other. Roy Gardner is awful – I just pretend like he’s speaking Latin when he talks. That accent of his is so stupidly affected, he might as well be speaking a foreign language.”

“Well unfortunately I heard every word in English, and since I really can’t start any more fights, I thought it better to come out here.”

“But why did you care? Anne can’t stand Roy. He could buy her a country and she’d still ignore him.”

“I just…look, I know it’s stupid, okay? But we haven’t seen each other in so long, and it’s my fault. I’m the one who decided to go so far away. I’m the one who picked the internship. I could transfer schools and be closer, or…or pick a different major so it wouldn’t take so long—"

“Anne would kill you. She would honestly kill you. She’d end up hanged – don’t do any of those things.”

Now it was Gilbert’s turn to be exasperated. “I know, and I’d never actually do it. But sometimes” –he ran his hands absently through his hair—“it just kills me to be away so much, and I know it’s because of my choices. So then when Gardner was over there talking about every eligible bachelor who isn’t a thousand miles away from her and would love to…propose to her right away and give her everything she could want without waiting another four years - I mean, at this point, you see her far more than I do!”

“Gilbert,” Cole started slowly, his amusement evident. “I think perhaps I should make something clear. Anne would never choose me over you anyway, but I can assure you that I would never try to steal a woman. Any. Woman.”

Cole waited patiently while Gilbert worked through his meaning, and Gilbert’s jaw dropped. “Well, that is…useful information, for me.”

Cole burst out laughing. “I suppose it goes without saying that I am trusting you to keep that to yourself, but of course Anne’s known for years.”

“Of course – I’d never say anything.”

“I know. Anne would never court a man who’d betray a confidence,” Cole said with a reassuring grin. Gilbert felt a surge of guilt as his mind played over every uncharitable thought he’d ever had about Cole. Even without knowing the truth about Cole's feelings, he’d never deserved it.

Cole laughed a little and Gilbert was drawn back from is musings.

“I should’ve guessed you were jealous. I knew you had a crush on her even before I moved away from Avonlea – I told her so once. The faces you used to make sometimes…I guess I figured you had enough sense to stop that after she chose you.”

“When did you tell her this?!”

“That day we hopped the freight. She didn’t believe me, of course. But you were standing there all smug when we opened the door – trying to be clever.”

“Hey!” Gilbert protested, though his face was sheepish. “I guess I never was as subtle as I thought,” he finally admitted. “And anyway, it was all worth it to see that look on her face when she saw me standing there,” Gilbert added with a laugh.

“No, you weren’t subtle, but neither was she. It was so obvious how she felt – which reminds me, tell me again why didn’t you just send Gardner away to get another drink and forget him?”

“I hate that she’s missing out on so much, waiting for me. It’s hard not to think that someone else might make her life easier – and apparently they’d love to try.”

“What are you talking about? Anne doesn’t like the easy way out of anything!” Cole turned to face Gilbert fully. “As I was just saying, this is the girl who hopped a freight to save our teacher; the same girl who published an article without anyone’s permission and threw the town into an uproar. The same one who has been concocting elaborate plans to go to the women’s suffrage convention without Matthew and Marilla’s knowledge, because she knows Marilla will disapprove if she gets arrested. I honestly sympathize, because I actually do know what it’s like to miss someone you love.” He stared hard at Gilbert. “But if you think that Anne is waiting around every day for you to propose and would be happier to find some guy who will just…hand her things on a silver platter, I think you may not understand her very much.”

“I do know, but…sometimes I want to be able to hand her things on a silver platter. She’s been through so much – doesn’t she deserve a silver platter?”

“Yes, but what she wants is you and whatever platter you’ve got. So…I dunno, give her a tin platter or something.” Cole shook his head. “The platter metaphor is going a bit too far at this point. Try this – give her a...charm for her bracelet, if it’s bothering you so much, and stop pouting. She probably wants you to stop pouting most of all.”

“Since she’s mad at me right now I’d say that’s probably correct,” Gilbert replied with an exhausted eyeroll. “Apparently I should have brought the gift I got in Toronto to the party, since I need to find a way out of trouble, now.”

Cole pursed his lips to hide his smile. “It wouldn’t have been the worst idea.”

Gilbert stared at the ground in silence for a moment, gathering the courage to apologize to Anne. Finally, he straightened up. “Time to talk to her, I guess. Can you ask her to come down, or—”

“I’ll show you how to get there from the servants’ entrance. It’s fine – no one else is up there.”

Gilbert nodded. “She was excited about the dress, huh?”

“She wouldn’t stop talking about it. You can thank me for telling her to buy it,” he snickered.

“ _I_ should thank you?”

“I told you that you aren’t subtle. You _loved_ that dress,” Cole chuckled.

. . .

Gilbert tiptoed along the plush indigo and white-patterned carpet until he arrived at the second door on the right, per Cole’s instructions. He steeled himself for a moment before the door and knocked softly, feeling a surge of anxiety buzzing in his head as he heard the rustle of skirts inside.

“Cole, if you just tell Aunt Jo I have a headache I’m sure she’ll leave it—” she stopped short when she saw him on the other side of the door. “He was supposed to tell you I was sick.”

“I came to say…I’m sorry,” he stammered, eyes wide as he took in her drawn expression.

Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t resist when he pulled her tightly into his arms. “I know I’ve been acting strangely all night, but I swear, it had nothing, _nothing_ , to do with you. You didn’t do anything.”

“Then what is the problem?” she wailed, face still buried in his neck. “I was so excited for you to come home and you’ve been…distant, all night!”

“If I tell you that I was being jealous and stupid, and that it wasn’t your fault at all, will you forgive me?”

That made her pull back in surprise. “Why…?”

“Because sometimes, I really wish that I was here, and not making you wait so long. You bear it admirably, Anne-girl, but I know you hate it too.”

“But what does that have to do with tonight?”

“Because Roy Gardner decided to point out that he’d very much like to take my place, and that he’s in a position to propose and give you the life of your dreams, right now.”

“He said that?!” Now Anne’s skirts rustled again as she paced the room. “Let me go find him! What a pompous, _presumptuous_ , villainous—"

“Yes, he’s a jackass.”

“Precisely.”

“I don’t even like his as a _friend_! Even being in the same room with him requires the patience of Job…,” Anne shuddered.

“I know – I said it was stupid. I was tired from the trip, and it was so hard to miss all that time with you this summer, and I just…let him get the better of me even though I shouldn’t have.”

She approached his slowly, eyes still wary. “It’s going to stay hard,” she sighed. “I don’t like it either but…we can’t give up! I don’t want to give up – I don’t want to give up and I have a great life already—”

“That isn’t what I was trying to say at all!” He grabbed her hands in desperation and ran him thumbs over the satin of her gloves. “I would…never give up. It’s just that I wish it was easier, sometimes, and faster.”

She absorbed his words with uncharacteristic silence, and he began to feel the buzz of anxiety in his head again.

“You have a place in my heart that couldn’t be filled by anyone else in the world," she declared firmly. "I don’t know what nonsense Roy was spouting about proposing, or whatever else, but I’m happy with the way things are with us right now. I’ve never thought that I’d prefer someone else so that I can be engaged now or whatever preposterous claptrap Roy was on about.”

Gilbert knew everything Anne said was true before she even spoke the words, but he still breathed a small sigh of relief to hear it. Some days, assurances to himself weren’t enough. Some days, he really, really needed her.

He bit his lip in contemplation, and her gaze softened as she watched him visibly relax. There was no mistaking the adoration on his face when he responded.

“You know I’ll propose when the time is right but…you also know how I feel. It doesn’t matter what we call our relationship or where I am – it will always be you for the rest of my life.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a searing kiss. After months of separation, her touch was at once familiar and exhilarating, and for a fleeting instant, Gilbert regretted that he’d been too out of sorts to consider pulling her into a darkened corner of the garden. He could’ve started this delightful interlude hours ago, instead of wasting precious time thinking about the taunts of the worthless Roy Gardner.

Anne eventually untangled herself from his grasp and moved to lock the door. “Let’s just stay here until the end of the party. I can’t possibly face Roy right now. You and I both know that I do _not_ have the right temperament to sit through another moment with him tonight without causing a scene.”

Gilbert glanced nervously at the door, remembering briefly their last disastrous interlude in a bedroom. “Well,” he replied as casually as he could, “Cole told Aunt Jo that you took to bed with a headache, and that I went to my lodgings, so they’re not expecting us to return.”

“Good, then you can tell me about your trip, and we’ll talk about what we want to do tomorrow when we go home.” If Anne was feeling any apprehension about spending time alone at the present moment, she wasn’t showing it. “If the weather is nice, we simply _must_ take one walk down Lover’s Lane before everyone finds a million other things for you to do and they steal you away from me again!”

Her gleeful anticipation washed away the last of his anxiety, so he drew her against him, her back flush with his chest, and wrapped his arms around her waist. The view of her long, creamy neck and just a hint of décolletage was particularly enchanting from this angle, he realized. He supposed he should have felt guilty for his less than chaste thoughts, but he had been simply too lonely without her to care anymore. Still, he stayed silent rather than make any overly suggestive comments in the already intimate confines of Aunt Jo’s guest bedroom.

“It’s nice to be alone like this,” she said with a slight smile. “I can finally hear what you are saying – it was so loud downstairs once the music started!”

He merely nodded and held her a little tighter, wanting only to savor the feeling of her snuggled against him for a moment.

“Gilbert…,” she said haltingly, “I think I need to take down my hair before we talk. Aunt Jo’s maid did a lovely job, but it feels so heavy and she pushed in the pins so hard! I think one might have pierced my skin, honestly.”

He began to tentatively pull the pins from her hair himself, brushing the tips of his fingers over each swirl and tuck to find them, until the strands began to release from their hold and tumbled down her back. Starting at the bottom, he stroked his fingers slowly through the strands, with the excuse that he needed to make sure he’d found every pin.

“Your hair did look beautiful tonight,” he murmured, “but you know how I love seeing it over your shoulders like this.” He twirled a strand around his finger and laid it carefully over her shoulder, admiring the contrast of auburn glow against pale skin as he turned her to face him. “And you look incredible in this dress. What was that phrase you used in your last story? ‘Eternal, ethereal beauty?’ I’m sure you were talking about yourself.” He let his eyes sweep fully over her body, so that she could witness his open admiration. He was rewarded with a sheepish smile and a look that had his heart pounding again, this time with want.

“I felt so nervous putting it on because it felt too daring but then I thought – what better reason to be daring than to steal the breath from my darling beloved?”

“Are you going to string together all your pet names for me into one sentence? Is that how much you’ve missed me?” he laughed, hoping that jokes would relieve the tension he felt building in his body.

“’My handsome man,’ ‘honored and respected sir’—"

“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t use that one anymore, even in jest. It’s creepy—”

Anne continued her list. “Dearest, beloved, honey, noble and handsome hero—"

“I noticed that several of them contain the word ‘handsome’,” he observed with an indulgent grin.

“That’s only because you love when I stroke your vanity,” she teased.

“Let’s think of mine. ‘Darling,’ ‘sweetheart,’ ‘love,’ ‘Elizabeth to my Darcy’—”

“I never should’ve admitted to you that I said that about our dance practice—"

“‘Perfectly freckled, red-headed dryad’—"

“That one went entirely too far!”

“It most certainly did not. How many times must I tell you that your hair and your freckles haunt my imagination when I’m all alone, without you?” He leaned over to inspect a few new freckles he had noticed, dotted as they were across her shoulders, usually hidden from view. “And now I see a few more that I am dying to explore.”

He leaned over tentatively, keeping his attention on Anne’s face as he drew her fully against him once again. She was watching him expectantly, and he brushed a whisper of a kiss over her cheek, before turning his attention to his newly discovered destination.

“This one is particularly nice,” he murmured, placing his lips softly against her skin, just where her neck met her shoulder. For a moment, Anne hardly moved or breathed, and he looked back up at her with concern. As he shifted, though, she shifted with him, extending her neck to give him greater access and letting out a shuddering sigh. He slid off her long, satin gloves as he caressed each new freckle, wanting to feel her bare fingers against his scalp while he continued.

She returned the favor when he had slowed down his ministrations, though his high-necked collar didn’t allow nearly as much room for exploration. He didn’t mind the restriction a bit, especially when she decided to throw all caution to the wind and nipped him lightly just below the ear.

He’d begged exhaustion after that, but only because he was now painfully aware that he didn’t want to stop touching her for anything, and that seemed like a very good reason to stop touching her immediately. He suspected that she knew exactly why he’d stopped, and her knowing smile nearly killed his resolve.

 _Maybe it is better that I’m 1,000 miles away. Roy was right, that jackass. She gets more tempting every time I see her._ Unlike Roy, he actually had a snowball’s chance in hell of leading her on the path to temptation right along with him, a fact that he tried (and failed) to ignore on a regular basis. This particular night, it was increasingly difficult to stop himself from making suggestions that would surely have Bash threatening him with painful death once again.

She asked if they could sit for a few minutes before he had to leave, so he steeled himself and pushed away every lustful thought by reminding himself that the slightly terrifying Josephine Barry stood mere feet away from this spot and could come upon them at any moment. It worked – but only just.

They sat next to each other on the bed, leaning against the headboard as they talked. Soon, she was yawning, and her head settled on his shoulder. He continued talking about the trip and his internship until he felt her body relax and her breath deepen with sleep. He stayed a bit longer than he really should have, watching her eyelids flutter and her mouth curve into a smile as she dreamed. He began to doze himself, until he awoke and realized that the house was ominously silent, and that he should leave before he risked falling asleep entirely and being caught by a servant in the morning. He finally departed her room with a reluctant sigh, after draping a light blanket over her sleeping form and pressing a soft kiss to her cheek.

“Sweet dreams, future wife,” he whispered. He’d like to try out that pet name in a letter, very soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...see? I promised I wouldn't leave you waiting. XD


	21. Blackberry Jam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I can't say this chapter has a plot, per se, but there's a lot of kissing. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll return to some plot later, but in the meantime, our couple is getting a bit...handsy or something. They spent a long time apart, what can I say?

The rest of the summer was decidedly less dramatic, which suited them both just fine. Anne remained furious with Roy Gardner (perhaps even more furious than Gilbert), and Gilbert began to suspect that the man was in for a very uncomfortable first year at Redmond.

It seemed to Anne that Gilbert had become especially affectionate that summer, as though he could squeeze seven months’ worth of kisses into just four weeks if he gave the effort sufficient attention. Every time she turned around, she found herself pulled into secluded corners and behind trees (not that she was complaining). On one particularly memorable occasion, Gilbert asked if she could come help him search for blackberry jam in the pantry, only to discover that the blackberry jam was nearly staring her in the face as he closed the door behind her.

“Blackberry jam, huh?” She asked with a sardonic quirk of her eyebrow.

He grinned, displaying nary a hint of remorse. “It was the first thing I saw.”

“Then you didn’t need help looking for it. This pantry is too small for two people to search, anyway.”

“Such a shame,” he murmured, eyes sweeping over her with a look that never failed to set her heart racing. Gilbert Blythe would be the end of her.

“You are incorrigible.”

“Can I help it if I want to be close to you?” he asked, opting for his best innocent pout.

“What has gotten into you lately?” she demanded, but her lips quirked into a smile and he could see in an instant that she wasn’t objecting a bit.

He raised his hands to cup her face. “I just missed you so much, and every day since that party I want to kiss you every second I can. I can’t help it.”

“Dancing together was magical, wasn’t it? We finally had our romantical Elizabeth and Darcy moment - spinning and looking deeply into each other's eyes." She beamed at the memory, and Gilbert was captivated once again. "If only I could wear that dress around the farm, but I think…that might not be the best idea. I’m not sure the people of Avonlea approve of the latest daring fashions.”

“Maybe we could have a special dinner and you could wear it.”

“Are you cooking it?” she laughed.

“If you wear the dress I will.”

“You’ve been thinking about it ever since.” It was a statement, not a question. She wasn’t shying away from his steady gaze, and he wasn’t shying away from her knowing stare. They both paused, unsure how to put their thoughts into words.

“You were…alluring,” he finally whispered, his lips only a hair’s breadth away from hers.

“Why?” she asked, almost certain she knew the answer but wanting to hear it anyway.

“You’re sure you want the truth?”

“Certain.”

“Because I want to touch any hint of bare skin I can find on you,” he murmured, enjoying the tiny gasp that escaped her lips. His eyes dropped to the buttons trailing down the front of her dress. “What I can see is so pretty…I want more, what can I say?”

“I wanted you to kiss me there.”

“I loved it.” He slowly raised up a hand, until his fingers hovered above the top button of her dress. “It wouldn’t be hard, to reach that spot again. Probably just this one button is in the way.”

She nodded, and let out the breath she had been holding as she felt the constricting fabric around her neck fall away. His mouth soon covered the spot where her collar had been, caressing the hollow in her throat. He moved languidly, lavishing attention at every spot he could reach with his lips and his tongue. Her eyes fluttered closed – she didn’t want to think of anything other than how it felt.

“I might need just one more button to get to my favorite freckle,” he finally said against her ear, his voice sounding so smooth and enticing that Anne gripped the shelf behind her to avoid collapsing against him. For a second, she felt the tickle of his breath over her chest as he looked down to undo the second button, and she had bite her lip to stop herself from asking him to simply unbutton the entire thing.

He started his mission again as soon as the second button came undone and he could push aside the fabric far enough to reach his destination. By now, the air between them had shifted, and whatever teasing and playfulness usually accompanied their kissing was gone, replaced only with a want so palpable that Anne desperately wished they were somewhere more private than the Blythe/LaCroix family kitchen. By the time Gilbert grazed his teeth on a spot just below her collarbone, her entire body spasmed, and her hand flew from the shelf into Gilbert’s hair. Unfortunately, that hand hit the aforementioned jar of blackberry jam.

To the two young lovers, the sound of the jar shattering on the floor burst out like cannonfire. Gilbert’s head shot up in alarm, while Anne’s hands flew up to her dress to button it. They opened the door to the pantry just as Bash rushed into the kitchen.

“Is everything alright in here?”

“Sure,” Gilbert replied, nodding his head over and over in a most unconvincing manner. Anne was uncharacteristically silent.

“Are you two covered in…blackberry jam?” Bash asked, bemused.

“Er, yes, accidentally fell from the pantry shelf while we were searching for it.”

“I’d better go home and clean up!” Anne cried as she hurried out the door.

Bash turned to Gilbert, eyes crinkled in amusement. "You couldn’t find the jam that was right in front of your face, Blythe?”

“I’m not asking for advice right now, Bash,” he answered with a grin.

“No, it seems you figured out a few things for yourself,” Bash admitted with a roll of his eyes. “I’m not even going to remind you about the rules anymore. I can't wait until you marry her, take her to your own house, and put the rest of us out of our misery.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made this chapter short because the next scene didn't make any sense with it, tonally. I should have it out in a couple of days. 
> 
> I hope you all are safe and well, and as always, I love hearing from you and I hope you enjoy!


	22. Late Summer Wildflowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a quieter chapter - everyone is a bit melancholy that Gilbert and Anne are separated again, but they're always thinking of each other. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How is everyone doing this week? I think I'm finally getting to be a better "teacher", but every day is long and crazy. It's so nice to have all of you to entertain and laugh with when there is a minute to breathe! I hope you all are well!

The summer was far too short, and they resolved not to spend so much time apart in the future, no matter what they had to do to make it work. They were already talking about the next summer on their way to Carmody.

“I still haven’t seen Toronto,” Anne pointed out. “I am _desperate_ to see all the incredible places you describe! It sounds delectable…,” she mused.

“You’ll love it,” Gilbert assured her with a grin. “I can only imagine what excitement you could find in a place like Toronto. I’m not sure if I’d want to be by your side every minute so that I can make sure you’re only getting up to a reasonable amount of mischief, or if I want to leave you to it so that I have some plausible deniability when Marilla asks.”

“As though I’d let you stop me from doing something,” she sniffed.

“Plausible deniability it is,” he laughed, wrapping his arm around her waist and giving it a squeeze.

As always, they exchanged torturous goodbyes and counted down the days until they could see each other again.

“110,” Anne groaned.

“Tomorrow will be one less day than it is today.” He leaned in closer and whispered in her ear, “and someday we’ll never have to do this again.”

The thought sustained them as they completed their familiar ritual, waving to each other as the train chugged away from the station, trying not to let their heartbreak show.

. . .

Later, Anne made her way back to the Blythe house, arms full of late summer wildflowers. She was surprised to see that someone else was already at her destination, in a spot she didn’t expect.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered, “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Bash looked up from his place on the ground, next to John Blythe’s gravestone.

“It’s not a problem, Anne. I see you brought flowers?”

She nodded shortly. “For Mary and Mr. Blythe. I’ve come here before with Gilbert of course but…I visit sometimes when he’s not here. I guess I think it’s nice for Mr. Blythe to have a visitor, now that Gilbert has gone away again.”

Bash smiled at that. He’d noticed the mysterious bouquets of flowers in the past, but knowing Anne as he did, he always assumed it was her. She was exactly the kind who would come, after all. “I do the same when Gilbert isn’t around. I figure his father wants to know what his fool son is up to and that somebody’s looking after him. I’m sure the man worried the boy’d starve of his own terrible cooking, otherwise.”

Anne carefully wiped away a little dirt on the gravestones before she settled on the ground next to him, arranging the flowers so they formed a perfectly draping array at the base. “We are kindred spirits then, Bash. I will say I think Gilbert’s cooking has…improved, though.”

“That is because you’re a fool girl in love and you see the good in him,” Bash laughed. “Did you know Mr. Blythe?”

Anne nodded. “I met him only a few times, when I used to drop off Gilbert’s schoolwork for a while shortly before Mr. Blythe passed away. His illness was quite serious by then…we knew the end was coming.”

“It seems from everything Gilbert says that he was a good man.”

“Marilla would know better, but yes, I’d say he was a very good man. She said that Gilbert has a lot of his father in him.”

“I’ll assume it isn’t the foolish parts.”

“If I’ve learned anything in college, it’s that everyone is a little foolish. I’ve lived with five other girls and that’s not even counting all the kids I knew in the asylum – believe me, I know.” Bash laughed at that, before they both lapsed into contemplative silence, staring at the names etched forever in the stones. “I said something silly to Gilbert after his father died,” she suddenly admitted. “He forgave me but – goodness I had a hard time forgiving myself. I still kick myself when I think of it.”

“What did you say?”

“I _meant_ to say that he could at least hold on to the memory of being with his father, and that it was a very good thing that he had those years with him. Still, though, it was the wrong time and it ended up coming out even worse than that. It ended up sounding like I meant he was lucky because he wasn’t an orphan for his entire life. As though anyone is lucky when their father dies.” She shook her head with regret at the memory.

“I’m sure you meant well.”

“I’ve also learned that meaning well and doing well aren’t the same thing.”

“At least you learned it.”

“Don’t tell him but…after he left, I used to come here occasionally. It seemed like the least I could do was make sure his father’s grave was looked after while he was gone. And…,” she added quietly, “I guess I thought there was something nice about at least…having a place to visit after losing a parent. I didn’t ever get to do that with my parents. It seemed like someone should visit Mr. Blythe, if they could.”

“I think it was very kind of you to do that.”

“I thought I owed him that much, after putting my foot in it so badly. And as you said, Mr. Blythe was a good man. He said nice things about my hair,” she laughed softly and wiped away a tear. “I wish Gilbert hadn’t lost him – or his mother.” She glanced over at Mary’s grave. “I wish none of us had lost our families.”

“Do you know what happened to his mother?” Bash asked, not meeting her eyes.

“Yes, from Marilla. Gilbert seems to go out of his way to avoid that topic.” She shifted uncomfortably on the ground, hoping her face didn’t betray her thoughts on the matter.

“I think…he has his reasons. Give him a little time.” Bash paused. “If you don’t mind me asking – how old were you, when your parents died?” He knew precious little from Gilbert about Anne’s past.

“I was a baby. I have no memory of them at all…,” she sighed. “That’s why it’s good that at least I have something of my mother’s now. I’m sure Delly will love hearing about Mary.”

“I’m sure she will. It means a great deal to us that you helped make that cookbook.”

“It’s important to have good memories,” she said vaguely, and the pause that came after betrayed an unspoken understanding. He knew she’d come from an asylum, and he couldn’t imagine that such places were any nicer here than they were in Trinidad.

Not wanting to pry, Bash searched for something else to say. “I’m glad you have Matthew and Marilla. I’m sure they can’t imagine life without you.”

“I’m glad he has you.”

“I’m glad he has you.” Bash paused and decided today was as good a day as any to be soft. “I worry about both of you, you know, when you’re away at school. You’re part of this family too.”

Anne dashed away another tear. “I know – and I love all of you, too. Somehow I’ve been blessed more than I had ever dreamed was possible.”

“I suppose we’re all suffering, and we’re all blessed, aren’t we?”

“’God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.’”

“Where’s that from?”

“Saint Augustine.”

“I’m glad to see that fancy school is of some use.”

“You’d think they could find some more useful authors than Saint Augustine! We could be reading Mary Wollstonecraft or Charlotte Perkins Gilman or George Sand but _no_ …. I guess I’ve now gotten a good quote out of Saint Augustine so I can thank him for his service and move on from that pre-modern Theology course.”

“I guess that fancy school isn’t so useful after all,” Bash observed with a chuckle.

They chatted about college, and Mary, and the members of Gilbert’s family who had lived in the stone farmhouse before them, until hunger overtook them and they decided to seek out supper inside.

“Gilbert doesn’t know you that you see his father without him?” Bash asked as they returned to the kitchen.

Anne cast an impish grin down at him. “Can’t I have any secrets?”

“You don’t really think I believe that this is your only secret, do you?”

. . .

_My Annest of Annes,_

_I have only just returned to my dorm, to my familiar desk, scarred and etched with the scratchings of countless scholars who preceded me. Of course, I think that I have put more scratches into this desk than anyone who has come before, because this is the place where I write to you. I could never come close to the joy I feel when I see you before me, but at least here I experience the moments that give me the purest kind of joy I feel when you are so far away from me – here, I can read your brilliant words to me and pour out my soul to you. Can you tell I am in the mood for a love letter? I wasn’t ready to stop declaring my love for you when we had to depart on the platform…_

_(several paragraphs omitted)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you ready to yell at me for omitting paragraphs in the letter? :D That was a nod to the books, where Anne's most loving letters were completely omitted from Anne of Windy Poplars and I could often be found yelling at LM Montgomery for holding back the good stuff. :) Rest assured, I'll have more letters next time and I think you'll forgive me. ;)
> 
> I’ll say that I think the Bash/Anne conversation makes sense to me because they spend a lot of time together and I think by now they’d have that much older brother/younger sister vibe going. Plus, Anne is well aware that Bash lost Mary and probably is smart enough to realize that his life before Avonlea was probably not awesome. So there’s a potential for shared suffering that I’m not even sure Gilbert can fully appreciate in either of them, and they both love Gilbert and know the things he won’t talk about. So, sometimes they confide in each other about stuff that somehow pertains to Gilbert or his well-being, including how he feels about losing his parents.
> 
> I forgot to mention one other thing - it seems like some fics are getting posted out of order (someone commented to me about it on another fic and other authors have flagged the same issue). I think the last chapter of Never Too Late might have had the same issue for some people (it's all done now!), so if you didn't see an update yesterday, it might have done something strange. I hope you enjoy if you haven't seen that one yet!


	23. Yours, Beyond Even Your Wildest Imagination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love letters and a request at the end...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone is great and you're staying safe! This is just a sweet, mostly plot-free chapter to make up for the fact that I was messing with you in the last chapter. Enjoy! As always, I adore hearing from you and your comments make me smile so much!

_My Anne with an E,_

_Will I ever tire of writing those words? Naturally, you already know the answer. I am looking out over the courtyard, at a gray March drizzle, and it matches my mood. Now the days are short and dreary, the work is never-ending, and it seems I spend all my funds on coal and ink (I do not mind when the ink is spent writing to you, but sadly much of it is spilled on Statistics and Cell Biology). Last night I worked on my Chemistry paper until after midnight (and yes, I can hear you scolding me. Tonight, I will sleep after I finish this letter. I have promised to take better care of myself and I will – if only so you won’t describe me as ‘haggard’ ever again! Talk about wounding a man’s ego)._

_Have you recovered from your cold and are you wearing your hat as you promised? I know it is my turn to sound like a scold, but you know how nervous I feel when you are unwell. If I cannot make you tea and force you to nap until you are as bright-eyed and full of life as my vibrant Anne-girl should be, then I shall fret and scold by post. Just wait until you have winter colds and we are living in the same house. You will be buried under a nest of blankets next to a fire and forced to endure examinations until you will do anything to be rid of me. There's an old proverb to the effect that shoemakers' wives go barefoot and doctors' wives die young. I don't mean that it shall be true in my household. So please, sweetheart, on this one, indulge me a little? Please be especially careful, and look after the one I love more than anything in the world?_

_This is mundane compared to my fervent begging above, but I am sure you would want to know that I finally participated in a hallowed U of T tradition on Friday – the Yonge Street pub crawl. The name is a complete mystery to me, as almost none of my classmates can afford to patronize establishments on Yonge Street and so we never stepped foot onto the namesake street; nevertheless, I suppose it was fun. I have been informed, however, that my friends are satisfied now that they have finally seen me drunk, and they request that I avoid such a state in the future. Before you go falling into a tizzy, let me explain. It seems that when I am in my cups (I believe it was four, Frank says seven, who is to say), I do nothing but talk about you. Frank is reading this paragraph over my shoulder, because he threatened to write to you himself and divulge every embarrassing thing I might have said that night if I did not confess to torturing my friends by announcing repeatedly (and at increasing volume, Frank would like me to add) that I had convinced the most perfect woman who ever existed to love me. So, I am required to inform you that I am absurdly, shockingly in love with you, and my friends insist that you come to Toronto so that they can see your perfection for themselves rather than listen to my “pathetic rambling” any longer (their words, not mine)._

_Now Frank is satisfied that I have sufficiently confessed, so he has disappeared and I can tell you the truth – I am not sorry or ashamed about my drunken ramblings at all, because I am, in fact, absurdly, shockingly in love with you. You know my feelings on the subject of a visit to Toronto; I would like nothing better than to introduce you to my friends and prove once and for all that my beautiful, incredible dryad is not a figment of my imagination. They see your photograph in its place of honour on my bedside table (though I don’t let them touch it because if they ruin it I might have to kill them), but they still like to joke that it is impossible to imagine that a woman as gorgeous as you would actually deign to court me. I am sure you are outraged to know that anyone would dare insult your noble and handsome hero, and I give you full permission to release your most creative and ardent wrath upon them when you come. No one could ever believe the extent of your passion and inspired way with words until they see it in defense of your loved ones (if you think I am teasing, let me assure you I am not – your passionate adoration for your friends and family is among your most endearing traits, and I love that you support and defend them as you do. I merely consider myself fortunate to be among those you adore and protect)._

_I have wrapped a blanket around my shoulders in a futile attempt to stay warm, but it is really only the thoughts of summer that break through the chill in my body (how is March somehow more terrible than January? A mystery for the ages, I tell you). In the next two months, I have an endless array of exams, papers, and experiments. As always, it does give me a certain kind of satisfaction to make new discoveries and see my hard work rewarded (oh, Frank has returned, and he insists that I clarify that I am currently first in my class, having finally beaten out George Pinehurst for the spot. Evidently, he thought my attempt to subtly share my triumph was altogether too subtle, and that I should simply tell my sweetheart rather than beating around the bush)._

_I recall that your roommates like to ask plenty of questions about us, but do you also have to suffer through such nosiness? I am tempted to write a paragraph describing my exact thoughts during our encounter with the blackberry jam, in the hopes he will see just a few words and never think to look over my shoulder again. I would never risk letting an interloper into such a precious moment in our lives, though, so I won’t dare to follow through with this scheme. I do not go to such lengths at home to conceal our embraces to simply reveal them to any annoying roommate who should really find another activity to occupy his evening._

_It is now morning, and as promised, I went to sleep at a respectable hour. I did not have a chance to finish this letter last night, though perhaps it is for the best because I am far less melancholy than I was yesterday. A bit of sun has peeked through the dreariness, and I swear I saw a leaf sprouting on the bushes outside. I am not ordinarily so excited about foliage, but I will happily embrace any sign that summer is approaching, and I will be returning to you. I cannot wait to spend a full summer together again, and then it will only be one more school year until you can come and live here (as long as you are still ready to do that – you will tell me if you have doubts?). I would very much like you to see Toronto before you decide to pursue a position here; it doesn’t seem right for you to decide before you have a chance to see if you like it. It’s certainly very different from Avonlea, or even Halifax. I have thought of so many places I want to show you, and I know from your letters that you are curious about many of the places I describe. The list is so long that I suspect a single visit will not do it justice and you will simply have to return to Toronto to live (too cheeky?)._

_I should explain why I interrupted my letter-writing last night, as you know I ordinarily prefer to keep my Anne-girl letter-writing time as sacred. It seems that Frank’s obnoxious interruptions yesterday had something of a purpose. He is, evidently, pining over Christine Stuart (yes, that one, and no, she has not renewed her attentions to me. Apparently, informing her that there is nothing anyone could ever say or do to turn my head from my perfectly freckled, red headed dryad and loudly describing the slate incident in her presence did the trick. How fortunate for me that you are both incredible and a bit intimidating). Anyway, he wanted to know how I managed to convince you to love me, in the hopes that my brilliance might be of some use, since we are (again, his words) “disgustingly in love.”_

_Suffice it to say, I will need your help with this one, dryad. I wonder the same thing, so perhaps you can help him find his way to happiness? Christine is nice enough, if not my ideal woman, so it could be a good match. I would like to see my friends as happy as I am with you. You might also need to give him some tips on displaying his ardour without being caught by our chaperones, as I suspect that finding opportunities for affection is even more difficult in Toronto than it is in Avonlea. My best advice to him is to find an empty barn or a copse of trees, but that does him no good, does it? Suggesting a secluded alley is simply unconscionable, so I am bereft of ideas. Perhaps if you come to visit, we can find some secluded places and recommend the best ones? Not that I am suggesting anything should happen in these lonely, quiet, undiscovered corners of Toronto, no no, it is for research only…._

_And for now I must close out this letter, much to my dismay. I am due in class in twenty minutes, and you know how Professor Niskanen terrifies me. I can hear you assuring me that I will be magnificent no matter what that old coot says, but I would still like to stay in his good graces if I can. I know you would want me to confess that I am nervous and unsure (though I will also confess that I hate admitting it), so I will say that statistics is dreadfully difficult and sometimes I cannot made heads or tails of the lectures until I’ve read the book about five times through. I have resolved to be honest with you about my shortcomings, so here it is – I may not do well enough in statistics to make it into medical school, and I am very worried. Sometimes I find myself waking in the middle of the night, worried that I will have to return home in defeat and endure the disappointment of our families and the judgment of, well, everyone. I hope this won’t unduly alarm you, because I am doing everything in my power to avoid that fate. Since you confessed your terror of Latin and geometry, I thought it only fair that I do the same. Now I must hurry to class and read over the day’s lesson one more time, all the while hoping against hope that Professor Niskanen will spare me for another day and call on someone else who might have some idea what the reading was supposed to mean!_

_I believe I was expected to share the details of the latest in scientific discoveries (as you insist on keeping up with every bit of my studies as though you were applying to medical school yourself, and I love you for it), and to respond to your extensive analysis of Keats. Do you mind, dryad, if I beg exhaustion and include my thoughts on both subjects in my next letter? I do so love to keep up our academic rivalry and correspond about x-rays and Romanticism, but sometimes I want nothing more than to spend a letter confessing my love and making it clear that my greatest joy in life is you, medicine be damned._

_With every ounce of love I could ever give, now and until the end of our days,_

_Gilbert_

. . . 

_Dearest and Handsomest Gilbert,_

_Where to even begin, when I still have your latest missive clutched to my breast and I can hardly imagine bringing coherent thoughts to my feelings for you? I suppose there is no point in becoming a Redmond B.A. in English if I am unable to put my feelings into words, however, so I shall soldier on._

_I will begin with the most important thing, for the end of your letter certainly did cause me alarm. As no stranger to judgment or disappointment, my heart is nearly collapsing in on itself as I think of you fearing either. Let me be very clear, just in case you needed any assurance – your worth is not dependent on a medical degree, and neither is my love or the love of anyone that matters. You might recall that I said you would make an incredible doctor because of your compassion for others, and that, my brilliant, inspiring love, has not changed. I have no doubt that you will make every effort possible to get into medical school, but if it does not happen, for whatever reason, you will do something else incredible with your life. You and I have more than enough evidence that adventures (of the soul-affirming, wondrous kind) come from the most unlikely places, and we will take another adventure if this one is not meant for us._

_I don’t mean this to say that you should not be disappointed or nervous – I haven’t forgotten your advice to me when I submitted my story to the Toronto Daily Star last year, or my (obvious, demonstrable, LOUD) disappointment when I was rejected. We both want to do amazing things, and I love you for that just as much as you love me. I mean only that I expect many adventures with you, and whether you are a doctor or not, our adventures will lead us to people and places we cannot possible fathom, even with my imagination. (Please, not the Northwest Territories, though. I read a story set there just last week, and I worry that I would lose my mind in a flight of fancy and accidentally freeze to death in such a place. You know me; it could really happen.)_

_I suppose this is not a wholly separate point - don’t think your very sly way of telling me about your position as first in the class meant that your accomplishment had gone unnoticed, Gil. I know you are trying to be modest, but no matter what, you should be proud of yourself for all of your hard work. You never do anything half way (stop laughing, I know you’re think of something other than studying right now, that isn’t what I meant – entirely) and I adore your passion for everything you do (fine, I give you leave to interpret that sentence however you wish). I am so proud of you, Gil, in everything that you do._

_Perhaps next I should move on to the piece of news that is of greatest concern to you (if I know you at all). I have recovered fully from my cold and promise that I am the picture of health. I am, in fact, outside right now writing this letter from my favorite corner of the park, drinking in the sight of the first little pea green shoots peeking up out of the ground. The sun has decided to make an appearance, so my favorite writing spot is bathed in golden light and seems an especially delicious place to pour out my soul to my darling beloved. I am, as requested, wearing a hat and even a scarf (though I do not think the latter is necessary, but I can’t have you fretting over such a little thing when you are already suffering enough). As for your declaration that you will drive me crazy when I grow ill in your presence – you underestimate me, sir. What makes you think I cannot drive you to madness first and convince you to cease your fussing? I have many years of practice with stubbornness, after all, and it is so fun to spar with you._

_Now a half hour has passed since I last put a single word to paper, as I became so distracted by my own imagination. I pictured you sitting beside me, arguing endlessly over the number of times you should be permitted to examine me if I were to fall ill, and the very thought of making your lips turn up in a smile and your eyebrows dance with confusion (and perhaps some alarm if I become too forceful in my arguments?) enraptured me to such a degree that I lost my train of thought entirely. At times like this, I feel so blessed to have such an imagination, because I don’t know how I would suffer our separation otherwise. It is still a poor substitute for your warm, tender (dare I say, exciting?) presence, but at least I know my dearest well enough to imagine how we would spend a quiet afternoon together, secluded in a park, so I can enjoy the idea if not the reality._

_I suppose that last paragraph also conveniently answers your question for Frank – secluded parks, with lush, leafy, tall bushes are his answer (provided you were truly asking for him…). As for how to convince her? Honesty, sincerity, kindness, just a hint of trouble-making spark when it suits his purpose? If he has a chance, he should try standing up to unfair and arbitrary authority on her behalf (if he tears a piece of paper in front of the school board, she may very well swoon and briefly consider pledging her undying love and her every kiss for eternity right on the spot). The truth is, after everything that you have said about him and as a dear friend of yours, I have no doubt that he is a lovely, worthy person. He must show her his true self and understand that she may accept it or she may not. Perhaps she doesn’t see it now for reasons that are entirely beyond his control, or perhaps she is looking for something other than what he can give. Like another lovely, worthy person I know, he deserves to be cherished for the person he is, whether that is with Christine or someone else at a later time. From someone who couldn’t dare to hope that she could ever be loved, tell him to hold on to hope that he is enough, and in time the answer will come._

_My stomach is in stitches at your question about roommates, because, yes, my roommates are as nosy as your friends. Phil merely asks how I can be so sure of my love for you, since she still cannot choose between her two potential suitors. I think that if she cannot decide, perhaps the answer is that neither is the right choice. Tillie, of course, learned the same, but perhaps we are all fated to learn the same lessons as those who came before by living through the mistakes, because some lessons can only be learned by doing. I can tell Phil only that sometimes, it becomes clear in the moment who belongs in one’s life. If she cannot imagine meeting her suitor’s eyes over the breakfast table every morning and feeling that she is where she belongs, I believe that is its own kind of answer._

_Like you, I suppose I should have written more about visiting Toronto (I have no doubts, dearest!), our upcoming dance, or my dreaded Latin (still dreaded, is the point), or my excitement over you finishing your Chemistry paper at long last. I will have to confess that I whiled away far too much of my writing time thinking over you instead of writing to you, and beg your forgiveness just this once for my abbreviated correspondence. I promise that I am bursting with topics of conversation for the summer, so be prepared to put that brain to good use (and yes I know what joke you would make if you were here, and yes I am blushing at the thought)._

_Summer cannot come quickly enough!_

_Yours, beyond even your wildest imagination,_

_Anne_

. . .

_May 1, 1902_

_Dear Mr. and Miss Cuthbert,_

_As always, I hope this letter finds you well…_

(several paragraphs omitted)

_As you know, I will be home very soon, and – may I speak with both of you, alone, please, when I return? I have something important I’d like to ask you._

_I remain, as always,_

_Yours respectfully,_

_Gilbert_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "There's an old proverb to the effect that shoemakers' wives go barefoot and doctors' wives die young. I don't mean that it shall be true in my household."
> 
> That line is from Anne's House of Dreams, and I thought it was appropriate here. 🙂
> 
> ETA - I should admit in this case that the "several paragraphs omitted" was mostly because I assume Gilbert's letters to Matthew and Marilla are mostly about...cows and the weather or something, and I didn't have it in me to pretend to know anything about farming today! I thought you might forgive me since I didn't skip the love letters this time... pretty please? 💕


	24. A Small Interlude to Watch Gilbert Be A Lovestruck Dumbass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As requested, the night that Gilbert gets drunk and talks about Anne. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will return to the part I know you're waiting for very soon, I promise! But in terms of the timeline of the story, it seemed to make sense to let this go first. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Thank you so much for the comments and kudos on the last chapter. I'm so glad you enjoyed it and it's always so wonderful to read your thoughts!

_Dear Miss Shirley Cuthbert,_

_I thought I should thank you for your advice about Miss Stuart, so Gilbert was kind enough to include this message of thanks with his letter. She particularly appreciated that I chose flowers with a specific meaning and remembered to include a passage from her favorite book in the accompanying note. I read the book cover to cover, twice, in the vain hopes that I would be able to converse knowledgeably about it (she at least smiled kindly during the discussion and didn’t turn away from me. I hope that counts for something)._

_I confess that I have no sisters and there are very few women in our classes (a serious failing; I know from Gilbert that you agree), so my options for advice are rather few. My mother’s advice is useless, as she would prefer that I marry a woman from our local congregation, and I haven’t the heart to tell her that I am rather less interested in cooking abilities and perfect manners than she. It is kind of you to take pity on Gilbert’s inept friends, especially when my follow up questions continue week after week!_

_I understand that you intend to visit Toronto soon, and I daresay that we are all greatly looking forward to meeting Gilbert’s sweetheart. Your reputation precedes you, but I will do my very best to stop the more boisterous among us from behaving as they might otherwise (which is to say, they will likely behave like complete buffoons in your presences and tease Gilbert mercilessly, and there is really nothing much that Gilbert, nor I, can do about it). Perhaps I should tell you what happened during the pub crawl before the rest of them insert their two cents into the matter, because their account is likely to be entirely exaggerated. Gilbert might be mad for you, but he is only a little, very slightly, ridiculous about it._

_You see, that night…_

. . .

“Another one, Blythe?” George Pinehurst asked, sliding a beer in his direction. He hadn’t really wanted another, but neither did he want to endure this evening without a beer in his hand, either. Though he had made some great friends in college, and was generally well-liked, he still had a reputation as a bookworm (and, in Lester Johnson’s parlance, a “stick-in-the-mud”) who was not prone to boisterousness, trouble-making, drunkenness, or skirt-chasing. Between his schoolwork and his job, his friends ordinarily saw him for meals, class, and study sessions, and the occasional game of hockey or chess. He had declined every invitation for carousing that lasted until the wee hours of the morning, and therefore was never found wheedling the RA to let him into the dorm after curfew. Most importantly, he was never found with a date to the school dances and assemblies or joining in the hallowed tradition of escorting the ladies from the nearby secretarial school to their boarding houses. 

At first, Blythe said very little at all to his new classmates about his life before U of T. He listened politely as the new group of men who surrounded him shared stories of boarding schools, one-room schoolhouses, farms, factories, cities, mountains, and every manner of growing up in between. He shared only that he was from PEI, an orphan who lived with his adoptive brother, and that he had once all the way to Trinidad while working as a stoker. He was the last to arrive at their dorm before school began, and when pressed on the issue, he said only that he had been deciding between a few schools and had been accepted at the last minute. In between all of the excitement of beginning college, no one bothered to ask anything else. They learned quickly that Gilbert was smart, driven, and surprisingly generous with his time and effort when his fellow classmates needed help with the schoolwork that he always seemed to finish in half the time. It was impossible to resent him for it when he never boasted about his achievements and nearly worked himself to the bone.

As time passed, little bits of information came out in dribs and drabs, and it became clear that there was more to Gilbert than studying. Still, most of his classmates would have described him in those first few months as “a good fellow, if a bit serious.” Only his roommate, Frank, had some inkling that more lay under the surface of Gilbert’s thoughts than Introduction to Biology and Philosophy through the Ages. He was the one, after all, who would watch Gilbert’s face light up like the sun when letters came from his family, and most particularly, when a letter bearing the return address for an “Anne Shirley Cuthbert” appeared in his post box. Gilbert was always a cheerful sort, but it was nothing compared to his countenance when the aforementioned letters would arrive, and he would curl himself onto his bed and open the pages of her letters as though holding a precious treasure.

When the first such letter arrived, mere days after school began, Frank had been shocked at Gilbert’s transformation. One minute, they had been discussing whether to head to the library to begin work on a research assignment. The next, Gilbert’s cheeks turned red as he reached into his post box and removed a crisp, white envelope, with the most impressive handwriting Frank had ever seen. He blurted that they would have to research later and tore up the stairs to their room.

Frank wasn’t a particularly inquisitive person, but then again, his roommate _was_ behaving oddly. He tiptoed into their shared room, eyes widening as he noted that Gilbert was reading his letter with a blissful expression that was unlike any other Frank had witnessed in their few days together. It also seemed that Gilbert hadn’t even registered his entrance, so absorbed was he with the contents of the letter cradled in his hand. Unsure of what to do, Frank settled into his desk chair and tried very hard not to look at his roommate. It worked, until Gilbert let out a delighted sigh so loud that Frank actually jumped, and turned just in time to see Gilbert grinning and biting his lip like a fool, just before he dropped the letter, buried his face in his pillow, and fairly shook with excitement.

“Uhhh, Gilbert, do you want me to leave…?”

Gilbert’s eyes snapped up to him with a start, as though his presence had been entirely unnoticed. “I’m sorry, I just – I’ve been waiting for this letter since the moment I left home and…the news is good.” Frank could’ve sworn that Gilbert’s eyes were shining with a few tears, but he decided he really didn’t want to know any more and turned back to his book. He tried to tamp down his curiosity, but when he turned back to Gilbert fifteen minutes later, he found the fellow staring at the ceiling with the same ridiculous grin still plastered on his face, and he couldn’t stand it a moment longer. “Did you win money…?”

Gilbert tried and failed to wipe the smile from his face and shook his head. “My…well, I guess I can say – my sweetheart, Anne, she wrote to say that she is well.”

“Did you expect her to be anything other than well?”

Gilbert sat up and shook his head again. “It’s a long story, but we weren’t able to say some things that we wanted to say before we left, so I’ve been hoping to hear from her so that I would know for sure that we were both…in agreement, on things.”

“So, you have a girl back in PEI?”

“Yes, I do,” Gilbert said, chest puffing out and eyes dancing with victory. He scrambled off the bed to write a letter in reply, and two more after that to his own family and to hers. That night, he continued their research project far into the night, displaying not a hint of regret that his correspondence had interrupted his studies. As far as Frank could tell, from that day on, the only activity that did take precedence over his studies was correspondence to Anne.

Still, he didn’t boast of his sweetheart to the rest of their friends, and it wasn’t in Frank’s nature to volunteer information, about himself or anyone else. Everyone finally found out the truth only weeks later, when an exasperated Lester demanded to know why Gilbert refused to go on a double date (Lester’s date would only agree if Gilbert was also in attendance, a detail that perhaps should have been a clue to Lester about his prospects for impressing the young lady). 

“I haven’t seen you asking anyone else to this dance! Do you intend to live like a monk forever?!”

Gilbert finally tore his eyes from his Biology text long enough to cast an equally exasperated glance at Lester. “I think my sweetheart would object very strongly to me taking someone else on a date, and she is very…forceful, when she objects to something.”

“Your…what?” That question came from Sydney Moffatt, who certainly paid enough mind to the goings-on at college that he would have noticed if Blythe had been chasing after a girl in Toronto. “When have you been courting? Are there girls hanging around the library that I am not aware of?”

“She’s in PEI, although, knowing her, she probably is also in the library,” Gilbert replied, with a small smile to himself that had Sydney and Lester exchanging mystified looks.

Gilbert remained rather reserved about Anne, not wanting to hear his sometimes crude, ridiculous classmates speak of her as they did their endless array of female conquests. Still, over the years, it became obvious to everyone that Gilbert was smitten with his mysterious sweetheart. Soon, his room was filled with art, pressed flowers, handkerchiefs, and other paraphernalia from Anne, and he would occasionally break his usual silence to share a story or impassioned article written by her own hand. He did admit the day before their first Christmas break, perhaps too thrilled with the prospect of seeing her again to bother with his usual reticence, that she had cracked a slate over his head the first time they met. That story was enough to sustain their teasing for years, and it came up every time the dining hall offered apples for lunch.

. . .

But on a windy March night in his third year of school, his friends saw a side of Gilbert they never anticipated, and hoped never to see again. Perhaps it was boredom, or self-pity after a long day, but Gilbert let himself be dragged along for the much-anticipated Yonge Street pub crawl.

“None of these pubs are on Yonge Street,” Gilbert deadpanned as Lester finished his extensive list of establishments to visit.

“Don’t ruin our fun, Blythe,” George laughed.

The evening proceeded much as they all anticipated it would for the first few stops. There were perhaps a dozen students in their party, and they made a loud and merry bunch. Gilbert remained on the fringe of the activity, grinning into his beer as his classmates threw back shots of whisky and slapped each other on the back (for what reason, Gilbert surely didn’t know). Gilbert was no stranger to drinking, though he did it only rarely and had never been one to over-indulge. There was something a bit fun about being swept up in his friends’ antics, though, so he took the beers that were offered to him, and even joined the rest of the gang when they decided that the entire group should do a round of shots to commemorate the occasion.

“We’ll be exotic and do Jamaican rum!” Some of the guys had never tried it, but Gilbert, with a secret smile that no one seemed to notice but Frank, said that he had. Gilbert gulped down his shot, only to look down and see some amber liquid still in the glass. With a confused shrug, he threw back the rest of the shot, missing the conspiratorial glances between George and Lester. (The next morning, when complaining about the alarming turn in their evening, George blamed the rum. “Blythe was fine until we gave him that second shot. It was after that – I’m not sure I’ve heard Blythe string that many words together in three years!”)

Soon they were in yet another pub, now full of rum and beer, when George slid a third mug in Gilbert’s direction. One of the seniors had been talking since the previous pub about some girl-or-other, apparently regretting that he’d been swept up in a whirlwind of Christmas cheer and had asked someone in his hometown to court.

“I am not made for love letters – she wants me to write poetry all that claptrap! I can woo a girl in person but this business is too much.”

“Gilbert here knows something about that,” George offered, nudging Gilbert playfully in the ribs.

“What’s that?”

“Well, I assume you’ve heard he has a sweetheart back home,” George explained.

“Oh? You trying to figure out how to end things gracefully?”

“WHAT? No, never!” His horrified shout was punctuated with a loud bang of his mug, and every head turned to Gilbert’s side of the table. “No Anne…oh God, I can’t even imagine what I would do if I didn’t have her.” He took a long swig of his beer and chuckled to himself. “Did I ever tell you that I confessed to her when she was drunk. I didn’t even realize it, because…oh God, I don’t even know why. That I ever survived that debacle and she still told me she loved me…I should send up prayers of gratitude daily. She looked so beautiful that night…she was dancing and her hair glowed even more than usual…she’s a redhead you know….”

George stared at Frank in alarm. “What is happening right now?” he mouthed quietly over Gilbert’s head. Frank shrugged in confusion.

“No – no, I have the opposite problem – I’m here and she’s there and I hate it every day. I can’t look into her eyes – they’re so pretty, really, she doesn’t believe that but the first time I saw her it was her eyes I noticed first. Or maybe it was her hair – she’s a redhead, you know—”

“Yeah, you said that already,” someone shouted from down the table, but Gilbert continued as if he hadn’t heard a thing.

“It could’ve been her freckles…they’re just so cute and interesting and I love following the patterns…maybe it was her mouth, or did I not notice that until later? I’ve loved her for so long now that I can’t really remember….”

By now the entire table was staring at Gilbert with rapt attention, until one of the Seniors asked, “…when exactly did you fall in love with her? Did we know he was courting someone?”

“NO, everyone, no – you do not want to do this—” Frank started desperately, only to hear Gilbert announce with another bang of his mug:

“Since the day I met her. I was, what, 15? I didn’t know what hit me, quite literally.”

“You’ve been in love with this girl since you were 15?” Now everyone around the table was peppering him with questions.

“This is Blythe, after all. He’s not normal,” Lester added. “You must’ve missed the part where he fell in love with her because she hit him over the head with a slate.”

“What?”

Gilbert shrugged, but his face was beaming, and his eyes were misty with memory. “What can I say? She’s passionate…it’s one of my favorite things about her. She’s like that with everything…so full of excitement and intensity…she puts her all into anything she does. The first day I met her she read a poem like it had captured her soul…that’s probably why her writing is so amazing. She puts her soul into it.” He gave a short laugh and paused to stare at the table. “It’s just that when that passion is directed at me and I’ve done something stupid – like call her ‘carrots’ – she has a fiery temper….”

“Well you did say she’s a redhead, after all,” their resident assistant, Hank, said with a impish grin.

“My stars you are all in for it now…,” Frank lamented.

“Redhead doesn’t begin to describe her. There are these little bits of gold in it and when she’s out in the sun or by the fire different parts of it shimmer and it’s so soft…”

“Do you just stare at her hair when you’re home?” Even George, who was somewhat more familiar with Gilbert’s affection for Anne, was becoming a little alarmed.

“Why are you making this worse?” Frank demanded.

“What do you mean worse?” Gilbert retorted, nearly losing his balance as he swung his body to confront his friend. “We’re talking about _Anne_ , what could be nicer than that? Did I tell you that she takes down her hair so that Delly can play with it, and then they each put all kinds of ribbons and bows in their hair and Delly just squeals with delight the whole time? I love it when her hair is down…and I love it when she’s playing with Delly…she’s so great with her…it makes me think of….”

The entire table sat in suspended silence, torn between a desire to end this uncomfortable moment as quickly as possible, and a slightly perverse desire to discover just exactly where it might go.

Gilbert leapt onto the table, causing all of his companions to reach out their arms, terrified that Gilbert would simply topple onto the floor. “I want to marry her!”

“You can just do that without almost killing yourself, Blythe! Write to her and propose!” Sydney shouted.

“I can’t do something so mundane as that!”

“You can’t propose to her in the middle of this pub, either, so maybe get down off the table!”

The bartender, who was in far better possession of his faculties than the gentlemen of U of T, ambled over to escort Gilbert off the table.

“I’m sorry,” Gilbert muttered as he clambered down, “I just need to get up the courage to do it, you know? I get so nervous but what is there to be nervous about? I know she’ll say yes and I want to do it so much….”

“Son, your sweetheart is not in this pub, so wait and practice in the mirror at home,” the bartender replied patiently, before turning to yet another group of rowdy young men who appeared to have started a wrestling match in the middle of the floor.

If his companions hoped that Gilbert was finished now that he had come to the obvious conclusion that he should propose as soon as possible, they were sadly mistaken.

“I won’t be able to propose until at least the summer!” he wailed, hanging his head. “I _hate_ being without her for all these months! There’s nothing better than having her in my arms and talking to her and every day that I’m here I can’t do any of that…and she’s been writing to me about all the work that she’s been doing to try to help our friend Ka’kwet – she’s always like that. She loves and protects everyone, even people who have been so unkind to her like Josie Pye, I just want to be able to see every amazing thing that she is doing, for myself, every day."

Gilbert continued to drone on, his words hardly coherent, except that occasionally they would hear “hopped a freight,” or “women’s suffrage,” or “women are not made whole by men” (whatever that meant they didn’t know), or “Christmas tree,” as though he were recounting every thought, word, and deed having anything to do with Anne. Gilbert’s friends left their flabbergasted classmates at the table and huddled in a corner to come up with a plan.

“You think if we can dig up some money, we could send him back to PEI for a while and we wouldn’t have to listen to him wail about missing her anymore?!” Lester suggested.

“I don’t think he’s going to fail out of school because he misses his girl!” Frank exclaimed.

“Are you sure? He’s about to break into song!” Sydney added with a bemused chuckle.

“This is insane – you think if we give him coffee he’ll turn back into normal Gilbert?” George asked desperately.

“How should I know?! You’re the one who broke him!” Frank peered over at the table, where Gilbert’s indecipherable monologue continued apace.

“I think it would be more appropriate to say that Anne broke him,” Lester snickered.

“I _dare you_ to go say that to him,” Frank shot back.

“What do you think we can do to get him to stop, then?!” George hissed.

“What if we tell him that she’s here, back at the dorm? He might leave if he thinks he’ll get to see her…,” Lester suggested.

“But what unfortunate martyr will have to leave with him and listen to this pathetic rambling all the way back?” George asked.

Three pairs of eyes looked up at Frank, who sighed in defeat.

Lester shrugged. “He is your roommate after all.”

“I already have to listen to this far more than the rest of you!”

“Then you’ve had plenty of practice.” Lester turned Frank around and practically shoved him in Gilbert’s direction. “Tell him to propose, before the rest of us find the fair Anne and do it for him just to shut him up.”

. . .

Gilbert miraculously lapsed into silence once they were outside, concentrating mostly on not tripping over his own two feet. As they neared closer to their dorm, he finally blurted out:

“She’s so beautiful.”

“I know, Gilbert, I’ve seen her picture.”

“It doesn’t do it justice. Don’t get me wrong, I like you and all but” —he swallowed thickly— “I’d really rather see her every morning than you.”

“You will someday.”

“I wish it was now.” Gilbert’s breathing became labored and his eyebrows were screwed up in concentration. Frank stared at him in alarm, wondering if he should find a bush or somewhere for his roommate to cast up his accounts. “I want to do it now. I’ve wanted to do it every day for almost three years, but I really don’t want to wait anymore.”

“You’re really going to propose?”

Gilbert nodded, though in his current state it was more like an uneven lolling of his head. “I’ve been thinking about it all the time. I love her so much. I know she knows but – I want her to have that one last thing, you know?”

“Then tell her all that stuff you told us tonight. I’m sure it will go just fine.”

“She already knows all of that,” Gilbert said with a sheepish grin.

“Do you really tell her that her hair is like firelight or whatever it was you were on about?”

“Yes,” Gilbert replied, as though it was the most obvious answer in the world.

Frank stared at him incredulously. “What must it be like to have to be around you two together.”

“Ask Bash – he’d give you an earful.”

“Let’s just get you home and you can plan this proposal – _to yourself and not out loud_ – tomorrow.”

“Well lilies-of-the-valley are her favorite flower so I thought I’ll have to find some…”

Frank heaved a sigh and nodded along as Gilbert continued talking, hoping against hope that his friend would pass out once his head hit the pillow. He would never, ever again let anyone give Gilbert a shot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I should say here that Frank doesn't go into too much detail in his letter to Anne and he definitely doesn't spill the beans about an upcoming proposal! He just says that Gilbert loves her hair a whole lot. 😀


	25. I Know Exactly What to Say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gilbert asks a very important question, everyone is very excited, plus...bonus letter content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was completely overwhelmed by your comments on the last chapter and I'm so happy that you all enjoyed it! I promise, there is Toronto content to come in later chapters.
> 
> As for this much-teased chapter, seriously, I hope this is worth the wait, because it meant a lot to me to give you something really good.
> 
> Extra special thanks go to jacksparrow589 for listening to me complain while I revised this chapter for the millionth time, and for acting as my continuity check when I was afraid my memory failed me. I hope you already know you're awesome, but let me say again that you are in case you need a reminder! <3

Proposing to Anne might be nerve-wracking; baring his soul to Matthew Cuthbert was downright terrifying. He had been distracted with the thought the entire train ride home, and it seemed that every time he had a spare moment his mind turned back to his perfect speech – the one that would convince Anne’s parents that they should trust him with their daughter’s heart, forever. He concocted arguments in his head sometimes, wondering if they’d say that Anne was too young, or that he should wait until he had completed school, or that he should fix some defect of character before he would be allowed to take this step (as he contemplated the last problem, his thoughts wandered to images of Anne in his favorite dress, letting out gentle sighs as he tugged at the fabric until it fell over her bosom, and he hoped very much that the Cuthberts could not entirely read his mind).

Marilla had assured him in her last letter that she would find an excuse to send Anne away from the house to allow for a private conversation. The first week of their summer break began much as any other, until the day that Anne left Green Gables to spend an afternoon with Diana (it had been excruciating for the bosom friends to be separated after leaving Queen’s, of course).

Marilla already wore a slight smile and a knowing twinkle in her eye when Gilbert opened the door to the kitchen. After so many years of tea and dinner in this very room, he knew that Marilla’s deceptively mild expression was encouraging. He breathed a sigh of relief until he looked at the table, brow furrowing in confusion when he saw nothing there.

“Shall we all go into the parlor?” Marilla asked. Somehow, that question made Gilbert’s heart pound and his stomach turn over. Ordinary afternoon tea did not take place in the parlor. They knew exactly why he was there, and there was no backing out even if he fumbled his speech. Matthew appeared from the hall, an inscrutable look on his face. Matthew was always kind to him, but he was so quiet and reserved that it was nearly impossible to know entirely what he thought. Anne would know, but their relationship was special. That was the problem. His mind kept flashing back to Anne’s departure to Queen’s, when she said he’d behaved with uncharacteristic nonchalance over her absence in an attempt to hide the depth of his devastation at losing her. How would Matthew feel about Gilbert taking her even further from her family? It was possible that they would never live in Avonlea after their marriage.

Marilla enquired after Delly, and Gilbert was grateful for the distraction. “Anne’s been working on her alphabet every day since we came home, and it’s coming along very nicely! Delly loves all of the words that Anne uses – A is for Atlantis, B is for Bluebell, C is for Cordelia….” Gilbert trailed off. He supposed they didn’t need to know every letter. Matthew and Marilla were both watching him in expectant silence, but only one of them was smiling.

“Well,” he started, doing his very best not to fidget, “as I said in my letter, I have something to ask you both. I want to start by saying that every time I come to Green Gables, I think about how very thankful I am that you brought Anne into our lives. I can’t” –he paused and cleared his throat to fight back the tears— “it’s impossible to imagine life without her.”

Marilla smiled knowingly at Matthew, who ducked his head and grinned a little at the floor.

“We feel the same,” Marilla replied with a small waver in her voice.

“You two mean more to her than anything—”

“I think it would be correct to say that you are included in that circle, Gilbert,” Marilla gently corrected him, and it was his turn to duck his head a bit in embarrassment.

“I suppose what I mean to say is that when I think about what I want for my future, for _our_ future, it’s for us to be there for each other. I’m sure you know I am here for your blessing to propose.” He paused and took in Marilla’s delighted grin just as she covered it up with a sip of her tea. Matthew was still watching Gilbert intently, so he sucked in a terrified breath and continued. “We all know that Anne wouldn’t feel right about seeking your permission, but she would be devastated to take such a big step without your full support. So, if you two have any doubts, then I want to respect your positions on the matter and do whatever I need to do to change your mind. We are all going to be a family, and I want all of us to feel right about it.”

The silence might have stretched for only a single second, but to Gilbert it felt like an eternity.

“Well…,” Marilla demanded, turning to Matthew, “you said you wanted to be the one doing the speech-making this time! Don’t make the poor young man wait!”

Matthew straightened in his chair and caught Gilbert’s anxious gaze. “We wanted Anne to have a fuller life than what we did,” Matthew said firmly. Gilbert’s heart sank momentarily, wondering if Matthew thought the life of a doctor’s wife too ordinary for his vibrant Anne. “I’d say you will make sure that happens, if I know you at all. You have our blessing, Gilbert, completely.”

Matthew and Marilla watched as Gilbert nearly collapsed into the sofa with relief.

“Excellent,” Marilla said briskly, “I suppose this means I can bring out the celebratory cake I’ve been hiding in the pantry! Do you know I had to shoo Anne away from there three times today? That is, if you think you are up to taking in sustenance. You haven’t touched your tea at all.”

Gilbert flushed and nodded. “I’d love any cake of yours, Miss Cuthbert.”

“I had this conversation with Anne when she first arrived. Family calls us Matthew and Marilla, you know.” She gave him a motherly pat on the shoulder and bustled out of the room, leaving a thunderstruck Gilbert and a bemused Matthew sitting in the parlor.

“She must really like you,” Matthew said with a chuckle.

“I can’t really…say that, can I?”

“You might work up the courage with me - you've said it before, I think.”

“Thank you…Matthew, for everything.”

“I couldn’t have asked for a better young man for our Anne. No thanks needed.”

. . .

Gilbert was nearly bursting out of his skin by the time he returned home, and he threw himself into chores with a ferocity that had Bash and Elijah eyeing each other in confusion.

“Something going on, Blythe?” Bash finally asked after Gilbert, in a fit of alarming exuberance, nearly tossed the pitchfork into the stall along with the hay.

“Nothing to worry about!” Gilbert assured him cheerfully. Bash returned to his chores with pointed look to Elijah and a shake of his head. There was no talking to Blythe when he was like this.

Bash knocked carefully on Gilbert’s bedroom door after the house settled for the night. He found Gilbert sitting at his desk, surrounded by a half-dozen sheets of paper and scribbling away at a letter. “Writing to your friends?”

“What? No, it’s – I’m…,” Gilbert stood, excitement radiating from every fiber of his being. “I’m proposing to Anne, tomorrow.”

Bash’s excitement nearly matched Gilbert’s, and he swept his young brother up into a tight hug.

“I win, I win, I win I win I WIIIINNNN,” he cried as loudly as he dared. Gilbert was joining in their ridiculous victory dance and couldn’t even bother to roll his eyes at Bash and his antics.

“How are you feeling about it?”

“It’s…I want it to be perfect. She deserves perfect, and tomorrow I’m going to make it perfect and I’m excited and I’m nervous and…Bash, I might just pace around this room until morning.” Bash watched him wear a hole in the rug for a moment before he glanced at the dresser and snatched up the half-full bottle of rum that still stood in its place of honor (or shame, depending on who you asked).

“I think this calls for a toast.”

“People do pre-proposal toasts?”

“They do when the groom-to-be is making his Best Man dizzy.”

“You presume you’re going to be my Best Man…,” Gilbert replied with a playful wrinkle of his brows.

“I can’t believe I’m wasting my best rum on such an ungrateful blockhead.” Bash hurried downstairs and returned with two glasses and an extra slice of pie.

“To Blythe letting me win,” Bash announced with glee.

Gilbert glared back as they clinked glasses. “You are not permitted to speak at the wedding.”

Bash swallowed a healthy glug of rum and grinned. “I’ll ask Anne and she’ll let me. You have no chance, Blythe.”

The toasts continued, as Bash felt he’d found the perfect time to mock Gilbert. “The boy returns home to freezing cold Canada just before winter, and he tries to tell me it isn’t because the girl he won’t stop talking about wrote him a letter.”

“There were other factors!”

“Are you marrying any of those other factors?”

“If I admit to you, once and for all, that I knew I had feelings for Anne back then and I was so excited to get a letter from her that I hardly slept that night, will you stop crowing about it?”

“No…but as a wedding present, I might crow a little less.” Gilbert threw another glare as him and took a long swig from his glass. Bash grinned back and did another little victory dance while his exasperated brother looked on. “What made you decide on now?” he asked when he finally settled into a chair.

“I couldn’t even tell you…it wasn’t just one thing, it was everything all rolled into one. The only reason I didn’t do it immediately when we started courting is that it seemed like too much, but she knew from the start that we would end up here. Every time I see her I come so close – she’ll do something incredible or she’ll smile at me just right or” –he drained his glass—“her hair will come loose in the breeze and I want to do it _right that minute_ , you know?”

Gilbert held out his glass for more, but Bash just stared at him, wide-eyed. “Maybe you’ve had enough.”

“Not possible!” Gilbert exclaimed. “The bottle isn’t empty.”

“I must’ve forgotten how long-winded you are when you’re drinking.”

“See,” Gilbert countered, listing forward as he jabbed his finger at Bash, “my friends say I talk about Anne too much when I’m drinking. They’re wrong – I talk about her just the right amount.” He chuckled into his now-empty glass. “Did I ever tell you about the first time I saw her?”

“No…”

“Billy Andrews…honestly that miserable wretch I hope I never speak to him again.” Gilbert, already deep in his own memories, missed Bash’s look of shock at his vehemence. “Anyway, I was walking to school, and there was Billy, scaring some poor girl in the woods. At first, all I could see of her was her hair, but who wouldn’t notice her hair? And her eyes...even from far away I noticed them. Once Billy disappeared and I had a chance to really look at her though…Bash, she was so cute.”

Bash struggled not to splutter into his glass. ”Long-winded and honest,” he muttered to himself, but Gilbert was in the middle of his story and hadn’t heard a thing.

“I tried to get her to pay attention to me all day, and it didn’t work! She wouldn’t even tell me her name at first! Here I was, chasing after her through the woods like a fool, asking her over and over to tell me her name. Then, she wouldn’t take my apple either! For the first time in my life, a girl ignored me completely. Of course, it turned out that she wanted to talk to me and she couldn’t because Ruby had ‘dibs’, a fact that will never cease to amaze and unsettle me, so I was stuck getting rejected by the cute girl all day long!”

By now, Bash hid behind his mostly empty glass and listened in silence. If Blythe wanted to drunkenly confirm every suspicion that Bash ever had about him and supply him with ammunition for a lifetime of teasing, Bash would listen all night. He thought about stopping Gilbert when the young man reached out to pour a little more of the dark liquid into his own glass but thought better of it.

“You know, when I got home that night, my dad asked he how I’d gotten a mark on my face. I didn’t say anything but apparently I was smiling so hard he thought someone had replaced his son with a grinning fool. He found out the next day from someone else what happened at school, and all he said when I came home was – ‘it would be a red-haired girl would turn your head.’ He tried so hard not to laugh, with the coughing and all, but he couldn’t help himself. I don’t think either of us had laughed that hard in years.” Gilbert took another long drink. “Even when she wouldn’t talk to me, I couldn’t stop noticing her. For once, I had an actual rival at school! Then every time we were competing, she would turn up her nose at me, and I’m telling you, that haughty look shot straight to my heart. I love how feisty she is….”

Gilbert eventually toppled onto his pillows, still recounting memory after memory of the days when Anne surprised him, infuriated him, inspired him, aroused him (Bash hoped very much that they would both forget that brief slip of the tongue), and made him fall in love, utterly and irrevocably, until he had no choice but to face the reality that she had captured his heart before he had any understanding of what that meant. Bash sat and let him ramble, feeling wave after wave of affection for the young man sprawled out before him. Blythe was his brother in all but blood, and for all his joking and teasing, it meant a great deal to him to see his brother so openly joyful.

 _I wish your father could see you tomorrow,_ he thought with a wistful smile. _Perhaps I’ll pay him and Mary a visit while Gilbert is off with Anne._

Bash’s gaze eventually drifted to the desk, where he saw that the letter on top was addressed to Anne.

“Blythe,” he finally interjected, “I don’t think you gotta write her letters when you can walk over to Green Gables and do it in person.”

“No, the letter is important!”

“What, you’re writing her a letter because you don’t know what to say?! You’ve done nothing but jabber about her for an hour!”

“That isn’t it at all! If anything, my problem is that I have too much to say.”

Bash snickered. “That’s true – our Anne does bring out the speeches in you, apparently.”

“I wanted a letter because I thought it would be a special memory but…I don’t need it. I don’t want her to think that I had to practice. I’m nervous but…I can do this. I can do this because I want to do it. I want to put that ring on her finger more than anything. I don’t have to practice a speech because I don’t have to pretend to mean any of it. I will mean exactly what I say, and it will be that I want to spend my life with her, because I love her so completely that I can’t imagine my life without her.”

Bash gave a low whistle. “You might not have practiced, but that was a pretty good speech.”

**. . .**

Gilbert truly couldn’t be sure how he survived the walk to Hester Gray’s garden for their picnic. He’d paused once along the walk pick her up at Green Gables, needing desperately to steady his breathing and check his pockets for what seemed the thousandth time. It hardly mattered that he’d tried to contain himself – the moment she opened the door and he took in her perfection, he nearly fell at her feet anyway. She was wearing a green day dress he’d always admired especially, complimenting as it did so completely the summer glow of her skin and the ruddy coils of her hair. By the time his eyes trailed over the tendrils that had escaped at her neck and back up to the shining blue eyes that always threatened to make him lose his mind in their depths, nary a coherent word came out of his mouth, and he was once again a terrified 18 year old who wanted nothing more than to make her look at him so tenderly every day for the rest of his life.

If he was behaving oddly that afternoon, Anne said nothing of it, and she chattered happily on their walk. Anne was immediately distracted with the riot of color from narcissus and violets when they entered the garden, and she waxed poetic about the heavy scents of mid-summer life settling over them as they listened to the rush of the nearby ocean, a constant, friendly reminder of their island home.

Gilbert decided he would never survive swallowing a single bite of food until he had accomplished his goal, so he took Anne’s hands as she settled on the blanket and spoke. “I was just thinking of Frank’s letter to you. I know he revealed much of my…exuberant adoration, when it comes to you, but I have a confession to make – Frank doesn’t even know the half of how I treasure you. Some things I hide even from him, because they’re too precious to share with a single soul, except for you.” He shifted so that he was on his knees before her. “Do you remember when you found my textbooks full of your letters?”

“I don’t think either of us are going to forget that day,” she said with a laugh.

“Well, there’s one you didn’t find, because I keep with me, always. Or I should say, I copied out every word so that I could put it in my wallet. I didn’t want to ruin the original. Maybe I shouldn’t admit something like that,” he said sheepishly. He slowly unfolded the page, worn and tattered from countless readings. “I always want to have this one, because it’s the first time that I saw you say 'I love you.'" Anne reached out to take the paper from his hands, gasping softly when she saw her own words, written long ago by the light of a candle while Diana slept.

“It gives me courage to see this when the days are hard – to know that you’re always there for me, that you’ve _always_ been there for me, even when we’ve made mistakes and…misunderstood each other or been upset with each other…we came back to each other. You let me have a chance that day, and I have been so grateful for it every day since. When I can’t be near you, I…I need to know that. I hope you know that I will always be there for you too."

Anne looked up through her tears to find Gilbert holding a small velvet bag, and before she could say anything, he spoke again, voice shaking slightly. “This is my last little secret. I’ve been a bit reckless, I guess, carrying this around, but I’ve had it with me every time I go to Toronto since that first Christmas.” He opened the drawstring and something fell into his hand. Anne gasped softly when she saw a perfect, warm, delicate emerald ring resting in his palm.

“The first time I saw this, it wasn’t long before my dad died. He said my mother loved this ring, and she always hoped a son or daughter would love it as much as she did. He said it was for when the right woman came along,” he laughed wetly and sniffled. “The first thought that crossed my mind was that emeralds would go perfectly with red hair. My second thought was that my first thought was perhaps the craziest notion I’d ever had, since I was a 16-year-old soon-to-be-orphan with a crush on a girl who couldn’t stand me.” They both chuckled a little and exchanged warm glance that settled Gilbert’s jittery heart, just a little.

“But in my head, after that, it was Anne’s ring, even when I tried to ignore the idea and argue it away. In the best and worst moments, I could never quite stop thinking of it as yours. It belonged to you, because you belong in my life, and I belong in yours. I wanted it with me in Toronto, because I wanted the things that belonged to you near me when you couldn’t be – your letters, your ring. I thought so much about the ways that I wanted to make you happy - to have a happy life together. I only ever looked at it when Frank wasn’t around, because it was too dear to me to show anyone. I pictured the two women who loved me most both wearing the same ring, and more than once I almost got on a train immediately to give it to you.”

Anne reached out a shaking hand to wrap around his own, the ring still protected in his fist.

“Your mother had excellent taste in husbands and rings. Is it any wonder her son leaves me in awe every day?”

Gilbert’s face took on a quality that Anne knew was reserved only for her – some depths of the soul were private, to be revealed only to the one who would be trusted to share her soul in turn for a lifetime.

“Marry me, please? I could go on for days about how incredible you are and how much I want to bring you as much happiness as you bring me, or write you more than Shakespeare and it wouldn’t be enough to tell you everything that I feel, but I want us to have a future, together, more than I want anything in the world.”

Anne could only nod dumbly before the tears spilled from her eyes again, and she looked into his eyes, her gaze brimming with hope and promise. By now they were both crying in earnest, as Gilbert pressed his forehead to hers and slipped the ring over her finger. He brushed his thumb over her knuckles and kissed the spot where Anne’s ring now found its proper home.

. . .

Marilla was practically bouncing like a schoolgirl when they arrived at Green Gables, and even Matthew and Jerry were surprisingly giddy. Within the hour, Hazel, Bash, Elijah, Delly, and Diana had arrived, and the impromptu engagement party that followed lasted until the lamps burned low and they were all nearly asleep in their chairs.

Anne and Gilbert were permitted to stay behind in the kitchen to say their goodbyes privately. After giving his fiancée (!) one last kiss, full of passion and promise, he pressed something into her palm.

“Considering that we weren’t able to keep our very first letters to each other, I thought it would be nice to have some special ones to treasure. You can read it after I’ve left.”

She waited until she was in her bed, after the excitement of the day died down and she could revel in her happiness in the deepening silence.

_My Anne with an E, my future wife,_

_We have written so many letters – to declare our love, to settle our doubts and misunderstandings, to share joys and sorrows, ideas, passion…to share our entire lives. I treasure every word you’ve ever written to me, but it isn’t enough. A lifetime isn’t enough, but I’ll take it. Every time I read your letters, I long to take you as my life mate, to share - in word and flesh and deed every day as we share on the pages of our letters – our life, together._

_Now that I have corrected a long ago error and proven that I do, indeed, know how to spell E-N-G-A-G-E-M-E-N-T, let me say again what you already know and I hope will never forget – I love you completely. I always have, and I always will. If you ever need a reminder, you have only to ask, but I shall endeavor to prove it again and again. I will count down the days until we are never parted again, but please remember until then what a joy it is to have you in my life. I am thinking of you even as you read these words, heart soaring as I remember that the most incredible woman in the world has agreed to share her life with me. We will make a life of love, and meaning, together, and I will never stop being exceedingly happy for it._

_With every ounce of love I have,_

_Gilbert_

****

(I thought this might be a nice addition)

** Anne’s First Letter – lovingly copied and constantly treasured **

_Dear Gilbert,_

_I look like my mother. This might not be the first thing you expected me to say, writing to you as I am the very day that you arrived at my doorstep, looking as handsome as ever, and made my heart soar so completely that it still hasn’t returned to Earth. So much has happened today that I hardly know where to begin, so I thought I should start with the other most exciting revelation of my day. I have always wanted to share so much with you and I am overcome with joy that my pen pal wants the same._

_Perhaps I should have started with my follow up question, though now I have so many that I cannot begin to imagine I will fit them all in this letter. I have a number of confessions as well, but this letter would be an encyclopedia if I dared to include everything at once. We will simply have to discuss our questions and confessions over months and months of correspondence. How fortunate that I have a very nice fountain pen to dedicate to this endeavor._

_I will begin with this question, however – I assume it is your intention for us to court? I’ve resolved this time to be bold, because I cannot stand the uncertainty and misunderstanding any more. I say we are courting, and I dare you to contradict me. You know I am up to the challenge if you would like to spar with me on this matter._

_Another question – could you please tell me just a little about how you feel about me? I believe I have pieced together the important points, between Diana’s retelling of your conversation, the night at the bonfire, and our meeting today, but after everything that’s happened between us, I hope you’ll understand when I say that clarity would be especially welcome. In case my own writing has not been clear, I shall start._

_You have been unforgettable since the day I met you. Even before I wanted to let you into my heart, you were already there, worming your way in with every kind word, thoughtful deed, and (I might as well tell you) exceedingly affecting smile. I will admit that I didn’t fully understand the meaning of my feelings for you until quite recently, but rest assured it is not because I was immune to you before then._

_In case this is your first question for me – what did I admire about you? We could start with your heroic defense of me on the first day of school, and so many times since. Perhaps you didn’t know that it meant the world to me to have anyone defend me, but it did. Perhaps it is the way that you helped Ruby stand up and dusted off her hat when she fell to the ground. You might not remember, but I certainly do. Small kindnesses matter so much more than grand gestures, in their own way. It was the way that you never questioned or belittled my intellect, even as you challenged it. It was the way that you adore your family, both born and found, and seek to make them loved and protected. It was even the way that your brow furrows when you’re concentrating on your schoolbooks (do you have any idea how adorable you are when you study? I could write an entire book only on that)._

_So now for my first real confession. I was given to understand today that you believed your feelings for me were unrequited, and my heart aches to know that I left you in doubt (for years, I understand? I think Diana might be exaggerating things a bit). I have been thinking back on our time together all day, and at every turn I seem to find a memory that I shroud in regret for the way I treated you. For whatever it’s worth, I did not come upon the realization that you deserved better from me just today. I’ve spent nearly every day of my life for the past three years believing that my greatest talent was putting my foot in it with you – the talent was more widespread, of course, but was most particularly strong when it came to you. It truly wasn’t your fault (well, mostly), but whenever you were around, I felt something I’d never felt before, and it left me confused and anxious (and by extension, unpleasant to you). With very few exceptions, it seemed unlikely to me that you saw me as anything other than an enigma, a scold, a rival, perhaps also, on our good days, a friend. How could you see me as anything else, when I had unleashed my very worst nature on you, the nature that had led so many before you to call me everything from a nuisance to a menace?_

_It wasn’t until very recently that I dared to see our relationship in any other way, and then the slow realization of my feelings became an undeniable fact. I was so terribly confused at the bonfire (and drunk – you do realize I was quite drunk, right?), but as soon as I could tell you with certainty that I understood what I felt, I wrote you a letter._

_There really isn’t much to say about the letter I wrote to you except the conclusion, which was short and to the point –_

_“I love you.”_

_Diana revealed to me that you never received my letter, so I understand now that you were not ignoring my confession all this time. I should also confess, I suppose, that I tore your letter into pieces as soon as I saw it. I was convinced that you had rejected my confession and so your letter must not contain any information I would want to read. I am so sorry for being rash. I did try to put the pieces back together, but somehow, I still misunderstood._

_I wish I could take back every hurtful word or gesture I have directed at you, and I can pray only that I will make it up to you in the future. I am sure it has been made clear to you in the last three years that I never do anything by half measures, so I hope you understand that by declaring my love for you, I am promising to love you as fully and passionately as anyone could ever love another. You will be in no doubt of my love from this day forward, so I hope you are prepared._

_Before I forget to tell you more about the mysterious beginning to my letter, let me tell you the story I so wish I could have told you in person. You see, I have been searching desperately for information about my parents for months, and in fact, I am ashamed to say that the day I snapped at you on the train I was anxious because I was returning to the asylum to seek information about them. I know you said it was all right, but I know it wasn’t, and I remain deeply sorry that I treated you thus when you were doing nothing but trying to help me. My excuse is that I hated going to the asylum, and I was so eager to find something, anything to connect me to my past. It is a frightful thing to feel slightly unmoored from the world, without the slightest connection to the ones who first brought you into it to anchor its meaning. Well, today, Matthew and Marilla stumbled upon a book that once belonged to my mother, with a drawing of her inside! Gil, she has red hair, just the same color as mine. It is far easier to endure the torment of red hair when I know that it is a family trait (and at least in the portrait, it looked quite becoming on her). I am nearly bursting to show you my book when you return home._

_I have forgotten to write of another revelation today – a most exciting one! Gil, you got into U of T! I am overcome with pride. At first I could think only of how terribly I would miss you and how much I wished for you to appear at my doorstep again to kiss me (I’ve resolved to be bold, recall). Only later did my thoughts clear enough to revel in my happiness for you. I hope you remember I said you would be a wonderful doctor, and I am so thrilled that you are one step closer to your dream. I will be here, writing to you and thinking of you, holding my love for you as a most precious treasure, until this season of life has passed. I expect endless stories of your life in an exciting new city, by the way._

_Diana has been telling everyone who will listen of your academic achievement today, but I suppose I should add here that I have not revealed our relationship to anyone other than Diana and Mr. Barry, who have both assured me of their silence. The memory of today is far too cherished for me to reveal far and wide just yet – sometimes when I am overcome, even I lapse into quiet. I wish I could escape for a while to a friendly copse of trees, or even my old hideout in the woods, and simply drink in this feeling. I know after only a few letters from you I will likely wish to shout from the rooftops, but I am more than content to remember the multi-hued depths of your eyes and the charm of your ruffled hair when I saw you at my doorstep and smile to myself when I remember that your loving gaze was for me._

_I suppose the exception to this rule is our families. I do find it terribly old-fashioned, but I suspect Matthew and Marilla would appreciate hearing from you. They know a little of the day’s events (you can guess what I omitted), but Diana informs me that it is the done thing for suitors to make some small effort to impress a woman’s parents. Should you like me to do the same and ask Bash if I am suitable for you? I am picturing his face now if I tried, and I will admit that I am sorely tempted, if only to give him a good laugh._

_For now, I must sleep, or I will be ill prepared for my first classes tomorrow. I am sure you would not want your old academic rival to fall behind in her studies. Rest assured, in my next letter I will spill many pages of ink recalling some of my most precious memories of you and the moments when I knew I was falling irrevocably, scandalously in love with you (are you giddy with anticipation? I am told this is how a good writer is supposed to keep her audience captive – do tell me if it works)._

_Until then, I hope you are safe after your long journey, and never forget that you are loved and admired by one who will never stop thinking of you._

_With every ounce of love I have,_

_Anne_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you are wondering, there is some mirroring of language in their letters to each other. It is intentional - they've pored over each other's letters so many times that they've begun to mimic turns of phrase unconsciously.
> 
> Stay safe, wash your hands, and have a great weekend!


	26. Toronto, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There will be a multi-chapter Toronto trip arc; set the same summer as their engagement, Anne is going to Toronto with Gilbert to see her future home (she has a year left at Redmond) and to meet his friends. Lots of fun and teasing to come but first...an important relationship development. ;)
> 
> If you didn't see an engagement chapter last week, go back and read Chapter 25 first!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone who is not here for hurt/comfort and people getting up to bedroom shenanigans, get off the train now because that’s pretty much all we’ve got for you today.

It turned out that giggling long into the night did not end when they left Queen’s. When Anne, Diana, Ruby, and Tillie gathered at Green Gables a week after her engagement, they were certainly ready to laugh and tease to their hearts’ content. 

“To Avonlea’s most scandalous couple finally making it official so that Mrs. Lynde will stop complaining about holding hands!” Diana toasted with her glass of raspberry cordial.

“Do you know that she said to me, on the day I came home from Redmond, that at this rate Minnie May will have a husband before I force Gilbert down the aisle? Plus, you should’ve heard her when Josie got married, and when Jane wrote to us about Mr. Inglis!” Anne announced with an exasperated wave of her hands. “Oh, I got an earful when you got engaged too, Ruby.”

“I’m still not married! Why doesn’t she complain to me?”

“Because she thinks Anne is a dangerous woman, and letting her roam the Earth unmarried is asking for trouble,” Diana snickered.

“If that isn’t the truth!” Tillie agreed with a playful jab at Anne’s ribs.

“You’re just lucky that Mrs. Lynde still doesn’t know how many suitors you’re stringing along!” Anne replied hotly, though Tillie wasn’t looking the least bit sorry.

“But Gilbert would run down the aisle if he had the chance! Everyone can see it!” Ruby exclaimed, still outraged on her friend’s behalf.

“Don’t worry, Ruby, I hold Gilbert’s hand in front her on purpose because I love hearing her splutter like that. Reminds me of an angry bird.”

“And now you’re taking a private trip with him before you go back to Redmond! Never mind Mrs. Lynde - my mother would have an affliction!” Ruby giggled. 

“There is a serious purpose to this trip, Ruby,” Anne responded primly. “I intend to apply to several academies in Toronto for teaching jobs and I would like to see them in advance. Besides, I am staying with Dr. Oak. It is all perfectly proper.”

“Nothing about you and Gilbert is proper,” Tillie said with a knowing smirk.

“There is nothing wrong with being scandalously in love,” Ruby replied. “It’s fun to see Anne staring at her ring all day like a ninny. I never thought I’d see the day!” 

“Gilbert is worse, I think,” Diana added, and Tillie and Ruby nodded their agreement. 

“We are not ninnies!”

“Sure,” Diana assured her with an artfully mocking sincerity, “I just can’t ask you about Gilbert’s academic achievements without receiving a novel’s worth of gushing…”

“Or Anne’s writing…,” Tillie offered. 

“Or Gilbert’s chin…”

“Or Anne’s hair…”

“And that’s before we talk about that time we caught you two in the kitchen at Josie’s Christmas party!” Ruby interjected.

“I think we’ve talked about me and Gilbert enough for one evening!” Anne declared, staring nervously at the door. “Can’t we tease Ruby about Moody for a while?”

Diana patted her head sympathetically. “We’re here to celebrate your engagement, Anne. It was always going to be this way.”

Ruby and Tillie eventually retired to the spare room after the umpteenth game of charades and a positively scandalous conversation about the things Josie had revealed to them all following her wedding night. Diana and Anne huddled under the covers of Anne’s bed for a while longer, still giggling like they were thirteen again.

“I notice you didn’t tell the rest of them that you’ll be staying in a hotel until Dr. Oak comes back from Vancouver.”

“There was no other way to see the Canadian National Exhibition! It ends the day before Dr. Oak arrives!”

“Uh huh, and I’m sure you really need to see the _annual_ Canadian National Exhibition this very year. I’m sure that’s it.”

“Diana Barry, you are the worst of them all. Gilbert can still stay in his dormitory!”

“If you say so,” Diana replied with a playful shove. “I will only say that I adore my bosom friend and her ability to conveniently leave out facts that would have Marilla giving lectures until the Rapture.”

“I suppose you want me to conveniently forget about your ‘friendship’ with Fred Wright so that your mother won’t start asking questions about a nice young man she’s never met?”

“We are both very good at keeping secrets, aren’t we?”

. . .

Gilbert already knew that his Anne had boundless energy, but as she peered out the window to watch the buildings grow larger before their eyes, he felt sure that her excitement could power the train’s engine all by itself. He had convinced her to lay her head against his shoulder and try to snatch a few hours’ sleep during their arduous journey, but otherwise she had done nothing but talk of Toronto from the moment they left Charlottetown. When she finally sensed that his energy was waning, she had settled down to write a letter to Diana (he had learned a few things over the years and didn’t bother to ask why Diana already needed a letter when they hadn’t even arrived at their destination). He noted with considerable amusement that she was bursting with anticipation, even in her writing. 

Though they were both exhausted by the time they arrived in Toronto in the early morning hours, Anne was far too enraptured to notice her fatigue. After leaving their bags at her hotel (it being closest to the train station), they set out for an exciting day at the fair.

After a few hours of sightseeing, snacking, and canoodling on romantic boat rides and in concert venues, even Anne begged exhaustion. 

“I never thought any day could be so exhilarating, but after so much time with you I have learned that even happiness becomes overwhelming!” 

Gilbert had laughed indulgently (and secretly cheered that he could finally collapse into his bed) before leading her back to the hotel so that she could turn in early. The skies had already turned dark and ominous by the time they arrived, and the rain began to pour almost as soon as they stepped in the door. 

“I hope your dorm will accept you past curfew if you can’t go anywhere without nearly drowning,” Anne remarked as they watched the water rush through the empty streets outside. They carried her bags upstairs, and Gilbert checked the window again, growing nervous when he saw that the sky was an odd shade. The sound outside grew alarmingly loud, and he realized that the objects bouncing off the ground below were actually bits of hail. 

“I think my dorm will have to take me past curfew. There isn’t any way I can go out in that and I doubt it is ending anytime soon.”

A moment later, they heard a sharp rap at the door.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” the porter began when Anne opened the door. “We’ve just received word that there was a tornado sighted not too far from here. We’re asking the guests to come downstairs, for your safety. The trunk room doesn’t have any windows.”

Anne nodded, and they followed a growing group of guests into the damp, airless trunk room. There was a single electric light in the ceiling, but it did little to lighten the gloom. Gilbert settled next to Anne on the ground, their backs against the cool wall. The roar from outside seemed to grow louder with every passing minute, until it was impossible to ignore, even without windows and with the door shut. 

Gilbert sat with his eyes closed at first, tired after a long day, until he felt Anne move next to him and started with alarm at the sight before him. Even in the dim light, it was clear that she was ashen, and she trembled fiercely. He whispered her name, but it seemed like she didn’t hear him at all. Her eyes were unfocused and unmoving.

He pulled her onto his lap, too terrified to bother worrying about scandalizing the other guests. He called her name, over and over, but she still wasn’t looking at him.

“Anne! Name all the characters in Pride and Prejudice!” he exclaimed, unable to think of anything else in his current panic. Sometimes he named all the bones in the skeleton when he was nervous. When she didn’t answer, he tried a different way. “I’ll start. Elizabeth, Mr. Darcy, Jane, Mr. Bingley, Emma, Mr. Knightley—”

Her eyes snapped up to his. “That’s” –she shook her head— “those aren’t right.” Her voice still sounded vague and far away.

“Okay, then you start.”

“Elizabeth, Mr. Darcy, Jane, Mr. Bingley, Mr. Bennett, Mrs. Bennett, Mary, Kitty…” she continued her list until she had exhausted every character. Next, it was Sense and Sensibility, then it was Mansfield Park, then it was Jane Eyre. It seemed like she was coming back to herself as she spoke, but her eyes were still wet and she still trembled. 

He watched her face closely and stroked his thumb over her brow, murmuring every thought that crossed his mind after she lapsed into silence. He told her stories of his childhood, memories of her from school, observations about medical advancements, and of course, tender promises to love her forever. He kept speaking, voice low and soothing, until someone finally came to announce that it was safe to leave. He led her by the hand back to her room, clutching a bottle of cider in the other hand, procured from a kind servant who took one look at Anne’s pale visage and insisted that she needed something in her stomach. 

She sat still on the bed as soon as they were in the room, moving only when Gilbert insisted that she take a drink. After a long period of silence, Gilbert finally settled back against the pillows and pulled her back into his arms.

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to but...do you know what just happened? Has it happened before?”

Anne nodded mutely, eyes filling with tears again.

“Sweetheart, you really don’t have to say anything. We can talk about it tomorrow, or – or, I just want to know if there’s anything I can do to help—” 

“It was…back…when I lived…with the Hammonds,” she started haltingly. “They had all kinds of punishments. Sometimes, they made me stay outside, like if I dropped something at dinner I might have to stay out there until bedtime. Or until they needed me for a chore – that usually happened first. But then…one night, Mr. Hammond caught me reading when I was supposed to be doing something else. He threw me outside, but there was a storm. Kind of like this one, and he wouldn’t let me back in. I thought I might be swept away—” her voice caught, and her eyes were faraway again. “It’s always happened like that, whenever there’s a storm. At Green Gables, Marilla would sit with me, if that happened.”

Gilbert clutched her fiercely and pressed a desperate kiss into her hair. He heard these stories from her only rarely, but he hated it every time. Not because he wanted her to keep things from him, but because he could feel the impotent rage coursing through his body. He couldn’t do a thing about what had happened to her, and what he could do didn’t feel like nearly enough.

“I’ll always sit with you too. Come get me the second you feel scared.”

He could feel her nodding against his chest, and her fingers clutched his shirt a little tighter.

“Can you stay with me for now?” she whispered.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he assured her. 

He stepped outside while she changed into her nightgown, and he merely removed his jacket and lay down in his shirt and pants. He wasn’t going to let her stand in the hallway in her night clothes, and he certainly wasn’t going to make things awkward by changing while she was in the room. She was already laying down when he settled carefully next to her, but she turned and curled into him immediately. He wrapped his arm around her waist and traced soothing circles on her back. 

“Tell me if you need me,” he whispered. “I’ll be right here.”

. . .

It was still dark when she awoke, though as her eyes adjusted she could faintly see the dresser across the room, with her dress draped over it. She didn’t have to see him to be acutely aware of Gilbert’s presence, as he was still firmly pressed against her back with his arm around her waist. 

_Men are heavy_ , she thought with a small smile. Though she loved his close presence, she had to admit to herself that she was a bit stiff from sleeping in an unusual position all night. She tried to shift as slowly as she could so as not to wake him, but she soon felt him stir. 

“Anne, is everything alright?” he asked, voice thick with sleep, but still unmistakably worried.

She turned slightly to face him and brushed a soft kiss over his lips. “Of course.”

She could sense his smile more than she could see it. “Then go back to sleep, sweetheart. We have plenty of time, and you’ve had a long couple of days.” He moved to curl her against him again, and she paused for a moment, listening to his even breathing and feeling the slight stubble of his unshaven chin against her cheek. She had never seen him like this, and the import of the moment wasn’t lost on her.

_This is what it will be like, every morning, after we’re married. This is what he’s like in the morning._

The thought made her shiver slightly with excitement and suddenly, she didn’t want to let the day continue as it was. She knew Gilbert – they could be in bed together for a week and he wasn’t going to do a thing if she didn’t give him a little (really, a lot) of encouragement. She stared up at his face, admiring the way his eyelashes fanned over his cheeks, as she gathered her courage.

She turned her head just a touch, letting her lips trail ever so lightly along his jaw as she moved. It was so subtle, it might have seemed unintentional, but she felt Gilbert’s reaction instantaneously. He had a way of freezing up when he was trying to hold back, and this time she could feel his fingers curling into the fabric of her nightgown as he tried to stay still. Smiling to herself, she tried again, placing whisper-soft kisses along his neck until she came to a particular spot just below his ear. He was already making very faint, pained noises in the back of his throat when she tentatively licked him, just where she knew it would have the greatest effect.

“Anne,” he groaned, the sound equal parts pleasure and suffering, “we really shouldn’t do this right now.”

“Is that because you don’t want to?” she asked innocently.

“Has that ever been my problem?” He teased, pulling away from her so that only their hands were linked. “But right now, we’re all alone, in bed…and I’m…I have a hard enough time keeping my hands off you on an ordinary day.”

“Do you plan to keep your hands off me forever? I seem to recall that we’ll be married someday. It would be awfully disappointing once we’re married…,” she said, trying her best to sound sultry. 

“I don’t think it will surprise you to learn that I have no intention of keeping my hands off you once we’re married. But right now–”

“Right now, what do you want to do with me?”

“Anne…”

She slid one hand up his arm to caress his face. “I know you aren’t forcing anything, and I don’t want to force you. But, I love you. I trust you. If you want more, you can ask.”

He looked so overwhelmed that she almost regretted saying anything, until he cuddled her close again and stroked his fingers through her hair. “I love you so much.”

She raised her eyes back to his. “I love you just as much. You think I’d even be in bed with you like this, otherwise?”

He was staring hard at her now. “Promise me, _promise me,_ if you don’t like something…if you want to stop, anything, you’ll tell me. I will never forgive myself if you have any regrets.”

“Have you forgotten who you’re talking to? You don’t have to worry about that.”

“I will always worry about you, sweetheart.”

“And it is one of the many reasons I adore you beyond measure.” She kept her tone light, but anticipation was making her breath uneven and her cheeks unnaturally warm. She wriggled until she was facing him fully and their lips were barely touching.

He dragged her a little closer and kissed her firmly, easing into the moment with familiar pecks and caresses. His hands were moving down her body, slowly but deliberately, and she realized belatedly that he had never touched her when she was wearing so little. 

“Gil,” she moaned against his mouth, unable to think of anything else to say that wasn't entirely wanton.

He stilled and raised his head to look at her. 

“Can I..I mean,” –he swallowed hard—“would you rather wear your nightgown?”

His obvious concern warmed her heart, but she found his serious, almost stern face so adorable that she nearly giggled. 

“In fact,” she purred, “I would not. Are you going to help me?” She could tell her every word was increasing his desperation, and she loved every bit of it.

He sat up and straddled her hips while she hitched her nightgown up to her waist. 

“You’re still wearing an awful lot,” she pouted.

He acquiesced to her complaint immediately, and began unbuttoning his shirt while she watched, before she started working on the bottom buttons herself. Shirt and undershirt discarded, she took the opportunity to slide her hands over his chest and shoulders as he leaned over. 

“I think you’re enjoying this already,” she whispered as his mouth hovered over hers. 

“Like you aren’t aware of what you do to me,” he quipped in return, before nipping softly at her lip and enjoying her gasp. His hand slid between them, and he carefully unbuttoned the top of her gown.

“You’re sure?” he asked one more time.

“Gilbert, you have your future wife in your arms, and I _want_ you, please.”

“You’re awfully polite when you want me. I’ll have to remember this,” he teased as he straightened up and reached first to switch on the electric light next to the bed. “I’d like to enjoy the view to the fullest, if you don’t mind.”

She pursed her lips and nodded. She worried that she might be embarrassed, but this was Gilbert, after all. He would never hurt her feelings or make her feel badly about her looks. It was nice to see his face more clearly, as well. His eyes were already full of romance, and Anne felt the thrill of anticipation as she watched him grasp the hem of her gown and tug it over her head. Once her view wasn’t obscured by a curtain of white fabric, her eyes returned immediately to his face. He was in awe, and she was extremely grateful for the glow of the single bulb behind her so that she could drink in the moment. 

He slid his hands along the sides of her waist, and leaned over to kiss her. “I hope you already know this, but I’ll tell you anyway – beautiful doesn’t begin to describe you. Stunning might come close. I could probably think of some more but—” he paused and smoothed the hair away from her face as he smiled tenderly at her, “I am too distracted because you’re so beautiful and I can’t think about anything else.”

He started by kissing and stroking every inch of bare skin he could find. It seemed that Gilbert was content to take his time, while she was whining and moaning for more. 

“Just a little longer, Anne-girl, please?” he asked with such an adorable pout that she could hardly refuse him. “Do you know how many times I’ve wanted to do this? I’ve been undressing you with my eyes since…well, that’s not important. I want to _savor_ it, sweetheart.”

“You can’t savor it later?” she gasped.

His wicked grin had her shuddering with need. “Oh, I’ll savor it later too.”

She threw her head back on the pillow and let herself go to his ministrations. Apparently, there was going to be plenty more where this came from, she thought with a wicked grin of her own. _Gilbert Blythe is perfection_ , she marveled as he found another particularly sensitive spot. _I should’ve seduced him years ago._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for all of your wonderful comments on the engagement chapter - it really meant a lot to me! Have a good weekend and stay safe!


	27. Sunshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A morning after snuggle and maybe some more...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! This time with...more bed shenanigans!

It took only a second for the memories to come flooding back. Gilbert felt the tickle of her hair first, and then came the realization that the smooth skin under his hands was most certainly not his own. He shifted her a little closer to him, savoring the feel of the bare skin of her back against his chest and the softness of her torso against his hands. She sighed contentedly, and he finally opened his eyes. The first image before him was of a tumble of fiery locks, some of it tickling his cheek, some of it brushing over her exposed shoulder and down her chest. It moved and shone a little as she sighed, since the sun was now high in the sky and streaming through the window.

He buried his face in her hair, breathing in deeply. He’d had so many fantasies about what a morning like this would be like, but it seemed that his imagination hadn’t been nearly enough. It hadn’t captured the way she smelled, the warmth that radiated from her body, the sounds she’d emanated that had haunted his dreams. He knew he’d be doing everything in his power to hear those sounds again for the rest of his life.

Still, even more than all of that, there was something else he hadn’t expected, the thing about this morning that had him blinking back tears as he adjusted the blankets over her shoulders and smoothed the hair away from her face. 

“Good morning, my wife,” he murmured, though he could see that she was still asleep and hadn’t heard him. 

It was really happening, and he knew it now, as he watched her peaceful face and saw a window into their future together. He didn’t give any thought to the likes of Roy Gardner anymore, and he had no doubt of Anne’s love. After so many years of longing, though, and so many painful months of separation, sometimes he still had trouble believing it was all real. He’d come so close to losing her forever. He tried to banish those memories whenever they unwillingly rose to the surface, but sometimes he would still find himself waking in the middle of the night, momentarily believing that he’d ended up in some terrible other world – one where Diana hadn’t found him, one where Anne hadn’t forgiven him, one where he’d given up on her entirely before he’d even tried. He would remind himself in his darkest hours that none of those terrible futures had come to pass, and instead she assured him, with every word and deed, that their future would be full of love and hope, together.

And yet, there was something elemental about what had happened between them last night. Once again, he had incontrovertible proof that she was his life partner – in his heart, his wife. He still looked forward to the day when everyone else would know it, but that day wasn’t the day that counted most. Every day counted, because they chose each other, again and again. He knew his Anne with an E – if she didn’t love him as wholeheartedly as he loved her, she would never have trusted him with her heart and her body. 

It was enough to sustain him more peacefully in the long years that remained - to have had even a glimpse of what it would be like to awaken by her side every day, where he could be sure every morning that she was safe, healthy, and loved. He would always come home to his wife.

He let his leg slide over hers as he settled back against the pillows, enjoying the contrast between them. She always felt so soft and delicate. Anne was, in fact, not generally a delicate woman at all (at least her mind surely couldn’t be described in such a way, to his delight), but he very much enjoyed the difference between her feminine form and his more angular, muscular frame. 

She finally roused and twisted in his arms until she faced him. 

“Good morning,” she whispered against his lips as she kissed him. 

“Good morning, my beautiful wife.” She flushed so brightly that her skin was pink as far down as he could see, and he was certainly looking his fill.

Her hands began to wander over his back, and by the time she reached his hips, she had no doubt of the effect she was having on him. 

“Again, my handsome husband?” she giggled.

“No, Anne, don’t worry about that. It sometimes just happens in the morn—” he wasn’t going to be able to continue speaking if she kept touching him like that. 

“Are you saying you don’t want to?” she asked, though her faux innocence wasn’t fooling him, and he jerked his hips in surprise as she continued her ministrations.

“Anne,” he gasped, “you can assume if I’m alive that I want to.”

“Just what scandalous thoughts have you been keeping from me all these years?”

“If you keep touching me, you’re about to find out in the clearest way I can show you,” he growled into her ear, just before she found herself on her back with her legs wrapped around him. “Is this what you want?” It was more a demand than a question, and she bit her lip with glee. It seemed that driving Gilbert Blythe over the edge would become her new favorite activity. 

“Yes,” she gasped, just before his mouth descended on hers and she lost the ability to speak at all.

The shock of his sudden transformation thrilled her. She’d noticed it a little before, but nothing compared to the surprise of finding herself almost entirely surrounded by him in an instant, while he kissed her fiercely. He was turning passionate before her eyes, and she _loved_ it. No one but her would know exactly how wild Gilbert Blythe could be, and it thrilled her to her core that she was the cause. He loved her, and he wanted her, and he showed her so intensely that it nearly took her breath away.

By the time her senses focused on anything other than Gilbert and his body, her stomach was grumbling insistently, but she tried to ignore it. She was splayed across Gilbert’s chest, smiling at the feel of her cheek pressed to him while he fanned out her mussed hair over her back with his fingers.

“I’ve always wondered what your hair would look like against your bare skin,” he mused. “It glows perfectly, just like I thought it would.”

“Always?” she teased, not daring to move an inch from her comfortable spot. “Such naughty thoughts for a mere schoolboy.”

“You wound me,” he protested, wrapping an arm more tightly around her under the covers.

“You never dared to have a scandalous thought about my naked form whilst seated across from me in the schoolroom?” Gilbert’s hand stilled and the silence stretched. Anne looked up to find him staring at the ceiling, blushing sheepishly.

“Gilbert Blythe! You _were_ naughty!”

“I was a young man in love and you had asked me about _reproduction_ the day before, in front of everyone! Is it any wonder that my thoughts...wandered...when next I saw you?”

Now it was Anne’s turn to blush sheepishly. “I suppose I have had scandalous thoughts about you at some terribly inconvenient times in my life, so you can be forgiven for neglecting your schoolwork momentarily in favor of more...erotic subjects.”

“Dare I say, we may be neglecting many things in favor of bed in the future?” Anne’s eager, all-consuming kiss was the only answer he needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...well, you might say this is...late?
> 
> I know this is true for everyone, so I'll just say - pandemics are hard. Several things changed for me in the last few months - some good (new job), some bad (almost lit myself on fire but I and my house are fine and healed!), but with a serious amount of upheaval came serious writer's block.
> 
> I thought it would be fun to dip my toe back into the water and finish up Anne and Gilbert's first, well, naked fun time. I have ideas for a few more chapters, but I'm afraid I can't promise a regular publication schedule just now.
> 
> I've missed you all, and I hope you are all doing well.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I can be found on Tumblr at practicallyasleep!


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